Bryce Harper’s Wife Gets Emotional Over One Part of His Public Scrutiny

Kayla Harper has had a front-row seat to nearly all of Bryce Harper's professional baseball career. She has heard the boos, seen the headlines and watched strangers pick apart everything from his play to his personality.

Most of it, she can handle.

But during the couple's first joint interview, Kayla explained why one particular kind of criticism still hits differently. As she tried to put it into words, she began to cry.

“It’s not even when people say he sucks, because obviously he doesn’t suck. I think it’s more when they attack his character and I’m like, ‘That is not him at all,’” Kayla said during the Sept. 1 episode of Kristin Cavallari's "Let's Be Honest" podcast.

For Kayla, criticism of Bryce Harper the baseball player is one thing. Hearing strangers make judgments about the husband, father and friend she has known since they were teenagers is something else entirely.

Kayla Harper Gets Candid About the Hardest Part of Bryce Harper's Fame

Bryce and Kayla met as teenagers in Nevada and have now been together for 16 years. They share four children, Krew, Brooklyn, Kamryn and Hayes, and Kayla has watched her husband's life play out under a microscope for essentially their entire relationship. The podcast marked their first interview together, with Kayla acknowledging at the beginning that she typically stays away from that side of Bryce's public life.

That made the moment all the more revealing.

“Why do I get emotional?” Kayla said as she wiped away tears. “But yeah, I think that’s hard, when you hear so many people’s opinions about your husband and that’s not the person that he is, or the dad that he is, or the friend that he is, or even the baseball player that he is.”

She quickly realized she was crying and added, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m crying. This is so embarrassing. This is why I don’t do this stuff.”

Kayla also admitted that staying out of the conversation hasn't always come naturally. She described herself as “sassy” and said there were times when she responded to people when she was younger. These days, she knows engaging usually doesn't accomplish much.

“I feel like he’s always had a really tough go at media ever since he was younger,” she said. “Seeing somebody that you care the most about getting torn apart by everybody who doesn’t know him. That’s hard to sit back and not say anything.”

After 16 years together, however, Kayla knows which opinions matter to her.

“At the end of the day, I know who he is,” she said. “He’s got his family. It is what it is.”

Bryce Harper Has a Very Different Approach to His Critics

Bryce, 33, has spent much of his life learning to tune out the noise. The nine-time MLB All-Star said he was first booed when he was around 13 or 14 and has dealt with outside opinions for so long that they no longer carry much weight.

“I couldn’t care less,” Harper said.

His reasoning was simple.

“I just feel like not any of those people that are really saying stuff are ever going to be at my Thanksgiving dinner,” he said.

It is an outlook that may come more easily to Bryce after years in one of the most scrutinized careers in baseball. For Kayla, watching someone she has known since long before the MVP awards, massive contracts and Philadelphia spotlight be reduced to a stranger's opinion can still sting.

Her emotional reaction made that clear.

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