You try pitching to him. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)

Bryce Harper — the LeBron of the diamond — has been drafted and his rights as a professional baseballer now belong to the Washington Nationals. Before you get too fired up about the man, the myth, and the legend, here’s some things you should know:

• Remember all that down to the last minute fretting about whether or not we’d actually be able to sign Strasburg? You know, that whole ridiculous facade where Scott Boras was actually telling people Strasburg would actually go play in Japan instead of here? Well, prepare for a second go around. Yeah, Harper is going to get straight paid, and he’ll get more than Strasburg. Time to loosen those purse strings again, Mr. Rizzo.
• Harper isn’t Strasburg. Harper is a complete freak, a teenager with the body of a man (6-foot-3, 205 pounds), a physical specimen that has everybody drooling with his utter presence at the place. But he is just that — a teenager. Baseball’s a cruel sport: can’t-miss prospects appear and burn out with alarming rapidity, year in and year out. (Anyone know how Todd Van Poppel‘s been doing lately?) Strasburg — so far, knock on wood — appears to be that once-in-a-lifetime kind of player who had nary a negative when he went pro. Having considered the fact that the major league amateur draft is about as big a crapshoot as you can get, the odds of one team coming into two galactically-talented players and having them both not screw up at all is pretty outstanding. After all, one only has to currently look as far as Baltimore to see a catcher who was going to save a franchise but is struggling to come to terms with his messianic lot.
• But you are more than welcome to hope that it will all work out splendidly.