RECIPES FOR SUCCESS

to do something halfway, he decided he wanted to know where everything came from.

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And that meant everything.

“Detergent, sheets, home products, cleaning products,” he says. “We switched it all. If we can make it homemade, we want to make it homemade. If we can get it from [our home] garden, we get it from the garden.” When he cannot source an item himself, he looks for small producers who can explain their process to him. “He wants to know where that cow’s been,” jokes former Phillies reliever Jeff Hoffman, now with the Blue Jays. (The answer: Utah, which is whence Harper sources his beef.)

That was all fine at home—even Harper's three children got on board once they learned that homemade macaroni and cheese is still delicious—but in-season, Harper eats most of his meals at work. So he approached the club’s head chef at the time, Keith Rudolf, about sourcing food. The team began stocking pasture-raised beef from Amish country, raw milk and Mountain Valley water in glass bottles. Harper says he received zero pushback about the cost: “[Owner] John [Middleton] and [GM] Dave [Dombrowski] are all about it if it’s gonna make us play better,” he says. On the road, Harper goes grocery shopping, hires private chefs or frequents restaurants whose ingredients he has vetted ahead of time. He stays away from preaching to his teammates, but he says they often come to him with questions. “A lot of guys are 80/20, which is great,” he says. “I do a terrible job of being 80/20. I’m as far in as I am.”

That doesn’t mean he never eats anything a layperson might recognize. Digging through his locker, he pulls out a bag of potato chips and reads the ingredients: “Potatoes, 100% organic grass-fed beef tallow, Redmond sea salt.”

As for the raw, or unpasteurized, milk, he understands it’s a delicate subject. The Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration both strongly advise against its consumption, and 18 states ban its sale.