Tonight’s Triple A game featuring the Lehigh Valley IronPigs at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown is sold out.
No, they aren’t giving away anything.
Except hope.
That’s what Phillies fans will be buying when a certain second baseman trots out to take his position tonight.
Maybe you’ve heard of him. His name is Chase Utley.
You know, as in Chase “World Bleeping Champions” Utley.
Utley has missed all of spring training and the Phillies first 75 games (76 if you count tonight) with a chronic knee condition.
It’s chronic now. I didn’t realize it was chronic over the winter. And I would be willing to guess a lot of Phillies fans – if not some front office folks – were a little taken aback when Utley showed up in Clearwater and announced he was unable to go.
Unless I missed it, it was the first I had heard all winter he was again having trouble. I expected Utley to show up at spring training and be ready to play. I did not hear anything otherwise from the Phillies.
I am left with the following possibilities. Either Utley didn’t tell the team he was having problems, or he did and the team decided the public didn’t necessarily need to know that bit of information.
Of course, it also meant that the Phillies would start the season without their two biggest offensive weapons, with Ryan Howard already being on the shelf after blowing up an Achilles tendon in the final play of that disappointing playoff loss to the Cardinals last fall.
So Utley faced the press yesterday at Citizens Bank Park before taking the drive up the Northeast Extension to play for the IronPigs tonight.
Utley wanted to make it clear that he doesn’t think he’s done. More than that, he wanted the fans to know that this Phillies team is not done, either, despite their 35-40 mark and last place position in the NL East. Actually, they're now tied with the Marlins, eight games behind the Nationals.
Perhaps buoyed by one of their leaders’ comments, the Phillies went out and blasted the Pirates last night. It didn’t hurt that the Bucs handled the ball like a hand grenade all night, throwing it all over the yard. They committed four errors, two on one comic play in the first inning as the Phils raced out to a 4-0 lead and never looked back.
If Utley can provide this team with anything, it is likely leadership.
How much he can give them on the field remains to be seen. He hit .156 over nine games in a rehab stint in Clearwater, getting out of there just before Hurricane Debby left Bright House Field under water.
Utley remains undaunted, saying his time in Florida was ‘encouraging.’
He is expected to be in the Phillies lineup tomorrow night, after tonight’s tune-up in Allentown.
Yesterday Utley lamented that there were a lot of people who have given up on him.
I might be one of them. I would love to believe otherwise, but I don’t know how much Utley has left in the tank. Nor how long those creaky knees will hold up.
But I will tell you this. With Freddy Galvis now also in sick bay (as well as serving a 50-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance), Utley is a better option than anything else Charlie Manuel can trot out there.
And just his presence in the dugout seemed to get a response from the team last night.
We’ll see how long that lasts.
It’s a long season. It’s too early to say the Phils are out of it. I’m just hoping it’s also too early to say Utley’s time is over.
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