Nationals Take Jonathan Papelbon Jerseys Out of Store After Bryce Harper Dustup

Endeavoring in a bit of revisionist history, the Washington Nationals appear to have removed every trace of Jonathan Papelbon from their team store at Nationals Park.

Twitter user Jennifer Shiffman (h/t SB Nation's Whitney Medworth) posted an image Monday of recent before and after shots of the team shop.

G Fiume/Getty Images

The Nationals closer's jersey went from being prominently displayed to conspicuously missing after Washington's 12-5 drubbing at the hands of the Philadelphia Phillies—a game wherein Papelbon went full Bobby Knight and attempted to choke teammate Bryce Harper for failing to run out a pop-fly.

If anything, whitewashing Papelbon from the shop seems like a flaccid acknowledgement of a failed experiment by the Nationals front office. 

Washington brought in Papelbon at the trade deadline hoping to bolster the bullpen of a team primed for a playoff run. Since the acquisition, the wheels have come entirely off the wagon for the Nationals—a devolution that doesn't rest on any one guy but doesn't do Papelbon any favors, considering recent events.

Papelbon received a three-game suspension from MLB on Friday for throwing at Baltimore Orioles third baseman Manny Machado's head during Wednesday's game.

Combined with a new four-game suspension levied by the Nationals for the Harper incident, Papelbon will sit for the rest of the season.

So if you need him, Papelbon will be on the pine, grinding his teeth, cursing every invisible force and element in the world that has conspired to put him in this position.

As for Harper, he didn't play in Monday's game against the Atlanta Braves for his part in the fight, per the Washington Post's Chelsea Janes.

"[Harper] was involved in a [dugout] fight with Jonathan Papelbon," said Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo, when asked why Harper didn't play in Monday's game. "That was the reason."

"Bryce had some accountability in the issue," Rizzo said. "We thought that to discipline Papelbon the way we did and not Bryce was unfair. You could see by the type of discipline we placed on both players which was weighed the most."

Translation: Chokers get four games and their jerseys pulled, while chokees only get a single game. 

Baseball rules win again!

Dan is on Twitter. Baseball isn't about not giving effort on a pop fly. It's about how you don't give effort on a pop fly.