TEMPE, Ariz. — Last week, I joked with Mike Trout that he should answer Bryce Harper's public recruiting pitches by aggressively lobbying for Harper to drop his no-trade clause in Philadelphia and join Trout in Anaheim, California.
Trout got a good chuckle out of that and then, as baseball's quiet superstar usually does, he immediately went off to hit without saying much of anything else.
However this all played out, you knew Trout would get the last laugh, because baseball's best player always does. Always.
And as word of his reported record-smashing, jaw-dropping, Harper-topping 12-year, $430 million contract (confirmed to B/R by industry sources) with the Angels rocketed throughout the sports industry and social media landscape Tuesday morning, there was no doubt it was happening again.