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Bryce Harper was 16 years old when Sports Illustrated did a cover story about him that included an anecdote about him smashing a home run that hit the back wall of the dome at Tropicana Field and dubbed him the LeBron James of baseball. Unlike many highly touted prodigies before him, Harper managed to avoid going the Danny Almonte route and followed in James’ footsteps by becoming one of the best players in baseball since being drafted with the first pick by the Washington Nationals in 2010.
Harper’s act is hard to follow up, but there’s one teenage star who’s starting to make a name for himself with the best name possible: Blaze Jordan. Bleacher Report published an extensive article on the emerging 15-year-old star from Mississipi, whose real, actual, legal name was given to him because his dad thought it would be the perfect moniker for a football player.
I swear I am not making any of this up.
Jordan— who I will refer to as Blaze from here on out as a tribute to how amazing his name is— started making a name for himself when he was 11 years old and hit a 395-foot homer during a home run derby at the Texas Rangers’ stadium. He followed that up a few years later with a 500-foot home run at a competition when he was 13, and he’s only gotten better since then.
Blaze has committed to play at Mississipi State (he alternates between playing first and third base), but the freshman in high school has already caught the eye of a number of MLB scouts, who have compared him to a right-handed Ken Griffey Jr. He even got the chance to head to Los Angeles over the winter to work out with Albert Pujols, who told him his batting form was basically perfect.
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It’ll be a while until we see if Blaze can ultimately live up to Harper, but based on the flow he has going on in that picture, he’s already headed in the right direction.