Howard, Utley have something to fall back on

Ryan Howard and Chase Utley just sat there in straight back chairs with bemused looks on their faces as they watched two drunks wrestle on the floor. Not until they paused to catch a breath with their dress shirts torn open, did the winning lines from the ballplayers help put a bow on the scene.

“I just saw you bite that dude,” Ryan Howard said while appearing as Ryan Howard in the program It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

That was followed by an invitation to wrestle from two of the main characters of the show, played by Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day, who were sprawled out on the floor at PSPCA benefit. Needless to say, charity events for animals have a tendency to get out of hand with grappling and/or fisticuffs popping up throughout a ballroom. It’s a serious business and some folks need to give until it hurts.

However, the invitation to Howard and Utley to join in the wrestling match because they were, “wasted,” was met with a witty rejoinder from the All-Star second baseman.

“No we’re not,” Utley said.

“No, we’re completely sober. But you guys drink a lot though,” Howard added.

“You guys drink more than anyone I’ve ever seen,” Utley finished before the ballplayers shrugged their shoulders and exited, stage right.

And to think, Utley was teammates with Vicente Padilla and has been known to work blue when delivering comeback wise cracks to fans in New York City or the home crowd when expressing delight in winning a World Series. For this occasion, Utley had to defer to the writers to craft his lines—you know, FCC guidelines and all. Plus, he seemed genuinely enthused and didn’t speak in clichés straight out of Bull Durham, unlike in situations with the press at his day job. On an everyday basis, Utley has the charisma of a toilet seat, or maybe he genuinely means that he wants to “stay within himself,” or “take them a day at a time.”

No sense getting ahead of yourself. It’s a long season.

Still, despite the star turn from the All-Star ballplayers, it was hardly the best thespian work by a Phillies player. Granted, it wasn’t bad and the scene in which the players play straight men for Howerton and Day was pretty darned funny. Who knows… it could open the door for more acting work. Howard seems to be branching out from commercials to situation comedies, which shows much more versatility than his work in baseball.

But when Howard paired with Jimmy Rollins for a short feature on the “Funny or Die” web site, the bar was raised pretty high. Here, take a look:

http://player.ordienetworks.com/flash/fodplayer.swf

Certainly there are fewer limitations on the web than with regulated mediums like TV or the radio. For instance, there’s no way the censors would allow Howard to get away with that dance that mimics Prince. It’s just too funny and a big man shouldn’t have moves like that. It wasn’t quite as wacky as Shaq’s entrance with the Jabbawockeez before the All-Star Game a few years ago, but it’s up there. Then again, word on the street was Howard and his buddy Jared was going to use the same moves in a Subway commercial until Shaq beat them to it.

Our loss. A dance with the Jabbawockeez might be the best way for Howard to make up for the appearance on the HBO show Entourage. No, he wasn’t bad, but that show needs to have the plug pulled. Either that or have an episode where the Fonz goes water skiing in his leather jacket.

Of course Jimmy Rollins is no slouch, either. He might not be working with big stars like Jared or the gang from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but his work in an ad for the sporting goods franchise, Dick’s, is Emmy Award quality. That’s the award they give to TV commercials… right?

Interestingly, when it comes to TV commercials the Phillies doing the acting have delievered nothing short of Olivier quality work. If I recall correctly, Mike Schmidt did a commercial for 7-Up in the early 1980s. It was around that time when Steve Carlton hawked milk in a TV spot, which for many of us who never heard him speak because of his refusal to grant any interviews, was a landmark event. We finally heard Lefty talk and then for a while he wouldn’t stop and it was all we could do to seal up his bunker in Colorado to keep him quiet.

Of course Carlton still turns up for the reunion weekends at the ballpark where he usually sits with the broadcast crew for an inning or two where listening in it sounds as if the ol’ left hander is attending a baseball game for the very first time.

The biggest draw for advertisers was Pete Rose, who shilled for everything from Kool-Aid, Wheaties, Nestle Crunch, and Aqua Velva. Having had the chance to hang with Pete in Las Vegas, it seems as if he was given a lifetime supply of Aqua Velva as payment for doing the ads because one whiff made it seem as if he was trying to use it all at once.

But, you know… it’s Aqua Velva. That’s the good stuff.

A commercial and work in a sit-com are very different. Chances are Howard and Utley spent a long day hashing it out with the pros. There was a lot of improve and the script mostly served as a guideline and direction for the actors. It wasn’t just about standing in front of a camera and repeating lines as the guys told former child actor turned MLB.com writer, Todd Zolecki, last summer.

“I don't really see acting in my future,” Utley told Zolecki.

That’s not quite the case for Howard.

“It was cool,” Howard said to Zolecki. “Once again, it was stepping outside my realm and doing it to see how it would go. Doing 'Always Sunny,' especially doing it with Chase, who everybody knows isn't usually a talkative guy—he did a good job. We had a lot of fun doing it. We were over there just clowning the whole time. It's just something that was out of both of our elements.”

See, they have the modest actor patter down perfectly. Perhaps talking to the press about baseball games where pedantic answers are given as a default has helped with the acting.

Nevertheless, the guys still have some work to do if they want to top Scott Rolen’s performance on Saturday Night Live a little more than a decade ago.

Wait… you missed that one? Don’t worry, Rolen didn’t host it like Charles Barkley has twice. However, Rolen appeared in a sketch with about a dozen ballplayers, including Phillie Gregg Jefferies and Mike Sweeney, in which they magically appeared in the room of a little boy played by Chris Kattan. See, the kid had posters of baseball players on his wall and dreamed of playing in the majors until the guys showed up in his room and acted like a bunch of ballplayers.

They blasted music, swilled drinks, made untoward comments at the kid’s mom before it finally was tied together with the show-stopping line from Rolen…

“Hey, Griffey is naked on the lawn again!”

Rolen not only delivered the line flawlessly on national TV, but he did it on a show hosted by Oscar winner Helen Hunt in which Jack Nicholson made a cameo. Nope, he wasn’t working alongside some dudes in the local community theater troupe. Rolen was trading lines with Oscar winners.

But get this… a couple of years later I told Rolen that I saw his acting chops on the show much to his amusement.

“You know, I can get a Screen Actors Guild card for that,” he said.

“Really? Not bad. A lot of actors would kill to get a SAG card. Do you have it?”

“No. I’m not going to get it,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“What am I going to do with it?”

“Well, what if this baseball thing doesn’t work out. You might need something to fall back on.”

Yes, this conversation actually occurred. Someone should have been filming it.

Howard and Utley bring the chicken soup

Who doesn’t like a little baseball wisdom?

All it takes is one…

Take two and hit it to the opposite field…

The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers…

Oh yes, the three-run homer. Is there anything it can’t cure? It’s like penicillin or chicken soup, and oftentimes it just takes one to make everything feel better. Knowing how troubled the Phillies’ offense has been this season, it seemed as if a little three-run homer for the soul is exactly what the team needed.

Actually, if it were Ryan Howard to provide some of the medicine, even better.

Ryan Howard and home runs have kind of been strangers lately. In fact, Howard hadn’t hit a homer since July 27, a span of 13 games. Add in the 16 games he missed because of his injured ankle, and it seemed like forever since The Big Piece hit a homer. Worse, the homer drought was sort of a microcosm of his post-DL production. Going just 4-for-36 with no extra-base hits, one RBI and 16 strikeouts was just as ugly to watch as it was to read.

“You see it. If you watch the games you can see I’m not comfortable in the box. I’m just trying to get it back, get a good pitch to hit and go from there,” Howard said last week. “It’s tough when you’re on the DL and you get out of that rhythm it’s kind of like going back to spring training all over again.”

Apparently, the problem was nothing more than finding that rhythm. Knowing that Howard and Chase Utley were like bombs waiting to explode, manager Charlie Manuel may have put his guys back into the lineup sooner than he should have. But that’s the thing about explosives—there’s a lot of patience involved. You have to wait for the reward. Obviously, Manuel was willing to put up with the bad in order to get to the good.

“We wanted them back, but the people who saw them play [said they were ready] and they wanted them to come back,” Manuel said. “If we would have left them down there longer and let them get a few at-bats, yeah, they would have benefited from it. But where we were at, we wanted them back when they were healthy.”

Clearly it has to be a little more than a coincidence that the Phillies scored eight runs in a game where Howard belted a three-run homer. Truth is the Phillies hadn’t scored more than eight runs in a game in two weeks until The Big Piece hit his three-run bomb to left-center field on Tuesday night. Better yet, Howard’s homer was followed by a long double in Wednesday’s finale and five more runs to take two out of three against the Dodgers.

“I wasn’t happy about hitting a home run,” Howard said. “I was just happy to get a hit.”

Looking for something to highlight for the moment when the Phillies got it going? It just might turn out to be the Aug. 31 game at Dodger Stadium where Howard hit that three-run homer. In the two winning games against the Dodgers, the Phillies scored 13 runs which is nearly as many as they scored in the six previous games.

Howard hit the long ones and Utley… well, he just hit. Certainly that was a welcomed change considering the other big bat in the middle of the order went 5-for-9 in the two games against the Dodgers with three doubles in Wednesday’s finale. A 5-for-9 offsets a 2-for-21 jag pretty nicely.

“When we’re clicking it seems like everyone wants to hit with him,” Manuel said. “Like if Howard and Utley are hitting, everyone else does too. They want to be along with it.”

The good part about that is it’s time to hit. The Phillies have been winning games despite their offense. It’s almost as if the pitching staff has decided to carry the load alone since there has been so little help from the hitters.

Howard is a monster in September. In exactly a season’s worth of September games—162 in the month during his career—heading into Wednesday’s tilt, Howard has clubbed 52 homers and picked up 141 RBIs to go with a .314 batting average. When other plays slow down as the season dwindles, the big man heats up. With the benefit of 16 extra days off, Howard should be quite ready if he has his mojo working.

And maybe that will be the tonic for Utley, too. Notoriously a slow finisher, partially because he has played through injuries, Utley has the benefit of 46 games off. Time spent on the disabled list should rejuvenate Utley down the stretch for a change, which was the silver lining when the injuries hit.

So now that the offense is hitting back, it’s just a matter of the Halladay, Hamels and Oswalt maintaining to the finish line. Oh yes, that’s the first part of the perfect remedy. If the three-run homer is the chicken soup, the pitching is what ties it together.

The chicken soup might make the Phillies feel better, but they can’t survive without H2O.

Brown making his way in a familiar manner

It was after the third inning of a Sunday afternoon game at The Vet on Sept. 17, 2000 when it was painfully obvious that Jimmy Rollins was never going to spend a minute in the minor leagues again. Only 21 that afternoon, Rollins hit a triple to lead off the inning for his first hit, but didn’t move too far from the bag afterwards as Bobby Abreu, Pat Burrell and Travis Lee struck out in order to end the inning.

But the point was made. Rollins was a big leaguer. No longer did he have to defer to the likes of Desi Relaford, Tomas Perez and Alex Arias because he needed to spend time at Triple-A so he could get the chance to play every day. All Terry Francona—and then Larry Bowa—had to do was write his name in the lineup and let him go.

Actually, the third-inning triple was just for show. Rollins walked into the old clubhouse ready to go. There was no sense denying it any more.

Just about 10 years later, Rollins snuck a peak over at rookie Dom Brown as he fished through his locker for his batting practice gear, and was asked the same question. He’d sign his name on a bat, glance over at the 6-foot-6 outfielder, and then smile mischievously remembering what it was like back when he was trying to elbow his way into the big-league lineup for good.

“You’ll have to ask Ruben that,” Rollins said with a knowing smile when asked if Brown will ever have to go back to the minors to be a regular player.

In other words, the answer was no. Rollins didn’t say it because he didn’t need to. If the Phillies wanted to send Brown back to the minors for more seasoning, they had plenty of chances to do it by now.

So let’s ask the general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. about Brown’s immediate future.

“It would have been nice [to get Brown more playing time], but right now we’re trying to win as many games as we can and he has the ability to do some things that even if he’s not playing every day to help us,” Amaro explained. “He has the ability to run the bases and hit with some power from the left side as we’ve seen. He gives us the chance to have the best club out there.”

Certainly Brown is in a position Rollins never went through. When he came up from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to play shortstop he didn’t have to look over his shoulder or wait his turn. From Sept. 17, 2000 to today, Rollins has been the Phillies shortstop without question. In fact, there stands a good chance that the team will offer Rollins a contract extension simply because there is no one in the minors breathing down his neck. Plus, even though Rollins is the longest-tenured Phillie, it’s not like he’s old or getting old. He’s coming into his prime athletic years right now with contract that ends after the 2011 season.

“I’m only 31,” Rollins said. “And the only reason I’ve been here the longest is because Pat (Burrell) left. You have to give those guys credit for drafting guys, bringing them along and keeping them together.”

In other words, Rollins wants to stick around for a while. And who knows? Maybe if the right deal is struck Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Cole Hamels very well could spend their entire careers playing for just one team. Needless to say, in the free agency era players tend to bounce from team to team a lot so if the Phillies are able to keep their main guys together. It says a lot about the guys running the club and the players, too.

A few lockers down, the next great Phillie quietly prepared for a game where he might only get in to pinch hit. Interestingly, Brown has been called on to pinch hit as many times (9) as Rollins has since 2006. Chalk that up to an experience Brown will have when he is a veteran that guys like Rollins, Howard and Utley don’t know all that well.

Where they all have common ground is in the waiting. Like Brown and Rollins, Utley and Howard had to wait in line to get into the big leagues, too. For Rollins it simply was a matter of seasoning since it’s likely he could have skipped the 2000 season at Triple-A and hit .221 like Arias, Relaford and Perez combined for that year. But unlike those guys, Brown is attempting to establish himself on a team that went to the World Series for two straight years. Rollins joined a Phillies team that was on the way to 97 losses and replacing the manager. That’s about as different a situation as one can get.

In other words, it was a good idea for Rollins to spend the season playing for a team that went to the championship round of the playoffs. Just like it’s a good idea for Brown to take the ride with the two-time defending National League champs instead of dominating for a Triple-A club playing out the string.

Brown definitely will learn more in the big leagues than he would in Allentown for the rest of the season.

In the meantime, Brown will wait for his chance just like the other big guns on the team had to do. Of course before he realizes, he’ll blink and will be 10 years into his major league career just like Rollins.

“It feels like it was just yesterday,” Rollins said about that sunny Sunday in September of 2000 when he hit that first triple.

It always feels that way. No matter what.

Does Charlie have Phillies on the right pace?

From the way Charlie Manuel explains it, he’s an organic kind of guy. In baseball there is a natural ebb and flow of things that Charlie doesn’t like to mess with. With its rhythms and whatnot, a baseball season unfolds a certain way for a reason so when there is anomaly that pops up, Charlie rarely bats an eye.

For instance, if a player comes out of the gate hitting everything in sight and posting huge numbers, Charlie doesn’t get too excited. Just wait, he says, everything will even out as long as nature is allowed to work its course. After all, it would be silly to sprint the first mile of a marathon with 25 miles left.

Pace yourself.

So with Shane Victorino back with the team after going 6-for-8 with a homer, triple and four RBIs in two Triple-A rehab games, and Chase Utley cleared to resume his hitting drills while Ryan Howard was back to taking grounders, don’t get too crazy with excitement yet. Charlie says there will be a period where the players will have to knock off some rust.

It won’t be the players’ fitness or skills that will be the issue, the skipper says. It will be the hitters’ timing. As Charlie explains, it often takes a player more time to recover his timing at the plate and his in-game conditioning. Sometimes just gripping a bat feels a bit weird even though the hits could be dropping in. As a result, a late-season injury to guys like Howard, Utley or Victorino might not be the boon logic would dictate.

On the plus side, the Phillies will have some depth.

“I feel like when we get everybody healthy our bench definitely should be as strong as it’s been all year,” Charlie said. “Without a doubt.”

That’s the only doubt Manuel doesn’t have. Otherwise he’s full of them. Baseball managers always are—even successful ones like Big Chuck. Truth is, calling them “managers” is a misnomer this time of year considering there is very little they get to manage at all. With the Phillies it has been about the injuries as well as some inexplicable ineffectiveness with the bullpen. Sure, Brad Lidge appears to have it together despite a bit of a dip in the velocity of his fastball, but the club’s lone lefty, J.C. Romero, is dealing with some strange “slow hand” phenomenon.

“My hand was slow,” Romero explained after a rough outing on Tuesday night against the Dodgers. “Not my arm. My arm got there. My hand was slow.”

Wait… aren’t they connected?

“I still, to a certain extent, don't understand what the problem is,” Charlie said about his lonely lefty. “We have to find out about it.”

See what were saying about “managing?” How can anyone have a say over a guy whose arm is moving faster than his hand? Perhaps it could be Romero’s mouth is working faster than his brain in this instance?

But don’t think for a minute Charlie would trade his injuries for the one Braves’ skipper Bobby Cox is dealing with, or for the craziness Mets’ manager Jerry Manuel has going on with his closer. After all, Victorino can go out there and play tonight while Utley and Howard should be back before the end of the month. Actually, the toughest decision Manuel has looming is whether or not to keep top hitting prospect Dom Brown in the majors or send him back to Triple-A for the final week(s) of the International League season.

Certainly there are some big issues concerning the Phillies, like what they are going to be able to do about the left-handed reliever problem. For now, we’ll just have to pretend that Ryan Madson is a lefty and hope he continues to strikeout left-handed hitters at a rate of 25 percent per at-bat. The righty handled two of the Dodgers’ toughest lefties in the eighth inning of a close game on Wednesday night and might find himself pushed into more righty-on-lefty action as long as Romero’s left hand continues to belabor the pace.

Still, no one with the Phillies was called down to the precinct house in order to post bail for the closer early Thursday morning. According to published reports, the Mets’ All-Star closer Francisco Rodriguez cursed at reporters before allegedly walking to another portion of the clubhouse where he was accused of committing third-degree assault on his 53-year-old father-in-law. The 53-year old went off to the hospital, while K-Rod was arraigned and released on $5,000 bail on Thursday.

With the rival Phillies headed for Queens this weekend, K-Rod likely will be serving a team-issued suspension. Meanwhile, ace lefty Johan Santana has been sued for rape by a Florida woman after authorities declined to prosecute.

In comparison, Charlie will take those injuries.

But certainly not the one that appears to cost Braves’ future Hall-of-Famer Chipper Jones the rest of the season. It came out Thursday that Jones tore the ACL in his left knee and likely will have season-ending surgery. If that’s the case, the first-place Braves will go into the final month of the season without their best hitter, who just so happens to be a Phillie killer, while hoping the aches and pains suffered by All-Stars Jason Heyward and Martin Prado relent enough so they can carry the load.

“When you think of the Atlanta Braves, the first guy you think of is Chipper Jones,” Braves’ GM Frank Wren told the Associated Press. “His presence in our lineup has been increasing based on his performance the last couple of months. He was a force. So, yeah, we're losing a lot.”

So put this way, the Phillies might be coming together just in time. Considering spring training lasts approximately six weeks, Charlie’s boys ought to be running at full steam in time for the last week of the season.

Talk about perfect timing.

Missing the Big Piece could cause big problems

So far the Phillies have done OK without slugger Ryan Howard. Of course it’s been just one game, but Ben Francisco and Carlos Ruiz popped homers and piled up seven hits on Tuesday night in Miami. That’s good because if the Phillies are going to survive the spate of injuries plaguing the team, guys like Ruiz, Francisco and new cleanup hitter, Jayson Werth, are going to have to deliver.

Because teams with injury problems like the Phillies don’t win otherwise.

Yeah, there have been a few teams in recent history that lost its top slugger during the regular season and were able to keep it together to get to the World Series. For instance, the Yankees played the first 28 games of 2009 without Alex Rodriguez, which would have been a crippling loss, if the team didn’t have guys like Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira ready to pick up the slack.

In 2007, Manny Ramirez missed 24 games in September for the Red Sox and hit his final homer of the regular season on Aug. 28. But when the playoffs started, Ramirez was back in the lineup and batted .400 with four homers through the first two rounds of the playoffs.

It also didn’t hurt that the Red Sox had David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis and American League rookie of the year, Dustin Pedroia. The Sox were so stacked that they traded Ramirez to the Dodgers midway through the 2008 season.

There’s always a fallback slugger, like in 1990 when Eric Davis missed 23 games in May and the last week of the regular season, but was ready to go in the playoffs when Reds’ teammates Paul O’Neil, Chris Sabo and Mariano Duncan stepped up. Davis was the best player on the Reds in 1990, but registered a 2.6 Wins over replacement (WAR) because guys like Billy Hatcher and Glenn Braggs kept the machine running.

Ah yes, running. That’s one way to combat a power deficiency. That’s how the 1985 St. Louis Cardinals made up for losing Jack Clark for 34 games in September and October. Considering that Clark banged out 22 homers in 122 games, which was exactly two more than the combined total of the six players on the team that played 100 games that year, his loss was significant.

Nevertheless, the Cardinals won 101 games and made it to the seventh game of the World Series (they actually won it in six games, but Don Denkinger… you know) partially because they swiped 314 bases—110 from Vince Coleman—and had a .335 on-base percentage as a team. Tommy Herr led the team with 110 RBIs even though he hit just eight homers. Willie McGee drove in 82 runs with just 10 homers and 18 triples to capture the NL MVP Award.

The strangest stat from the 1987 Cardinals is that they won 101 games with two pitchers that won 21 games with five players getting at least 30 stolen bases. Herr and Ozzie Smith swiped 31 bags in ’85, which would have led the Phillies in 2009 and been the fourth-best in the National League.

Yes, the game has changed.

But speed, as they say, kills, and it’s a weapon the Phillies used to their advantage to get to the World Series the past two seasons by swiping bags at a better than 80 percent clip. However, the running game for the Phillies has been grounded a bit, too. Shane Victorino leads the club with 20 steals, but he’s out for another few weeks with an abdominal injury. Jimmy Rollins hasn’t been caught stealing all season and has the second-most steals in franchise history in the modern era. But between the calf injury that led to a pair of DL stints and a sore foot that ballooned after getting smashed by a foul ball, Rollins has simply trying to hold it together.

So the Phillies are missing their speed and power as we head into the throes of August. And if that isn’t enough, Chase Utley is still days away from simply gripping a bat after he ripped the ligament on his right thumb. Over 162 games, Howard and Utley average nearly 80 homers per season, which is seven fewer than what the 1985 Cardinals hit all season.

What can the Phillies do if they can’t bash and run past the opposition? Werth, the darling of the SABR set, is streaky at best and followed a two-doubles effort in Washington with four strikeouts against the Marlins. There’s Rollins and Placido Polanco, but those guys are still recovering from stints on the disabled list. Raul Ibanez is starting to swing the bat, and catcher Carlos Ruiz is putting together his best season offensively. Also, Dom Brown is holding down a spot in the heart of the lineup, but is it fair to ask a rookie to keep the team together until the big guns start to trickle back?

So what do they do without Howard, a player that has dominated Septembers past?

How about pitching and defense?

Good thing the Phillies have the Roys and Cole, huh? Now if they can just close out some games they’ll be OK… maybe.

The next big thing

DENVER — Hang around baseball long enough and you will learn some lessons, most of them the hard way. It’s guaranteed if you’re smart enough to keep your eyes and ears open. It doesn’t matter how smart a guy thinks he is, how many good sources he has or how many games he has seen in person, there is always something.

So the best lesson I’ve learned about baseball that has been incorporated into my regular, civilian life is a hard one. There is very little wiggle room in this lesson and it is deliberate and foolproof if applied correctly.

Believe nothing. Unless you can confirm something or saw it occur in front of your own two eyes/ears, don’t believe it. In fact, even then it’s a pretty good idea to go out and get a secondary source. For instance, if you believe Albert Pujols is the best hitter you have ever seen, it’s a really good idea to get some back up. Try to find someone who has seen a lot of different hitters from all kinds of backgrounds and ask for their opinion.

Regarding Pujols, I asked Mike Schmidt and Charlie Manuel if he was, indeed, the greatest hitter I had ever seen. Schmidt went so far as to demonstrate Pujols’ batting stance right there in the clubhouse at Veterans Stadium where he described the genius of the Cardinals’ slugger.

“Watch what he does,” Schmidt said, squatting down low with his hands held high, choking up on an imaginary bat. “He always goes in there like he was two strikes on him.”

The thinking, according to Schmidt, is that Pujols is always weary, always thinking and always protective of his strike zone. Pujols wasn’t going to give in to a pitcher’s pitch or chase garbage. The theory is to kill a pitch over the plate and if a guy is good enough to throw one of those fancy breaking pitches on the edge of the plate, just tip your cap and walk quietly back to the dugout.

After that Schmidt went back to trashing Pat Burrell and his lack of hitting acumen.

Big Chuck didn’t demonstrate Pujols’ stance or make any over-analyzed hitting theories. Instead, Charlie made me think and dig between the lines. He does that a lot, actually. A big one with Charlie is, “Watch the game.” That means don’t believe the hype.

“He’s up there,” Charlie said. “He can be whatever you want him to be.”

What does this long-winded preamble have to do with uber-prospect Dom Brown? Well, everything actually. The truth is Brown’s long-awaited ascent to the Majors has sent lots of smart folks struggling to control their emotions. Long, rangy, smart, powerful and fast, Brown comes billed as the ultimate post-steroid era ballplayer. What do you need? Well, guess what? Brown has that trait in his repertoire. He was drafted in the 20^th round out of high school as a left-handed pitcher because most teams thought he was headed for the University of Miami to play wide receiver. Since then he’s never thrown a pitch in a game and the only catches he makes are in right field.

What those teams didn’t know was that Brown was a baseball player who grew up idolizing Ken Griffey Jr., which is perfect. Brown, a lefty in the field and at the plate, could be a stronger, faster version of Griffey. If Griffey was the ultimate player for the pre-steroid era, Brown is his successor.

Oh yes, he’s that good.

That’s the hype machine talking, of course. Griffey, ideally, should be a unanimous Hall-of-Fame pick five years from now. Of course there were a lot of players that should have been unanimous selections in the past—Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Tony Gwynn, etc.—spring to mind, but the BBWAA votes on these things… what are you gonna do?

The question no one has pondered is if the hype and the expectations are fair to Brown. There is a lot of pressure put on the 22-year-old kid to live up to a standard set by others. Yes, it’s the way it goes in this over-populated media landscape of ours, but that doesn’t make it right. Too often we are so quick to anoint everything the greatest hero or flop of all time. There’s never just good or mediocre anymore—it has to be extreme.

We saw this happen to Burrell when he was summoned from Scranton during the 2000 season and we could not understand why the Phillies took so long to call up Marlon Byrd in 2002 because we were told he was going to be the next great center fielder. Eventually Byrd became an All-Star, but it took three teams and six years after he left the Phillies to get there.

Then there were the untouchables, Gavin Floyd and Cole Hamels. When the Phillies were hanging around the cusp of a playoff berth in 2003 and 2004 as the trade deadline loomed, Floyd and Hamels were the first players every team asked for only to be told to beat it or were given a counteroffer that included Ryan Howard.

It was the Pirates, not the Phillies, which backed out of the Oliver Perez-for-Ryan Howard deal at the last minute. Coincidentally, Floyd was included in the trade that sent Howard’s roadblock, Jim Thome, to Chicago in order to clear a path for Howard.

As Charlie would say, “Funny game.”

Here’s what I know… having seen Burrell, Byrd, Chase Utley, Floyd, Hamels, Howard and Brown play in the minor leagues, I’d like to think my eyes and ears haven’t mislead me. I thought Burrell would be better with at least one All-Star berth to his credit. Byrd was marketed wrong and probably needed a little more work on his makeup in order to be a star for the Phillies.

Utley was raw and no one really was sure if he’d ever be able to field an infield position. When it appeared that Scott Rolen wasn’t going to re-sign with the Phils, Utley was promoted from Single-A to Triple-A where he spent the season playing third base. Sure, he hit fairly well, but some are still amazed that Utley didn’t kill someone (or himself) with the way he played third base. But out of all the players listed, he has come the farthest as a player. No one expected him to be the best second baseman in the game. Burrell was supposed to have the career that Utley has put together and Utley was just supposed to be a really good hitter.

Who knew?

Floyd was a talent, but not as good as Hamels and certainly lacked that cockiness and swagger the lefty had even way back when he was pitching for the Reading Phillies.

Howard? Wow, was he smart as a minor leaguer. The aspect to Howard’s game that goes unnoticed is how quickly he can make adjustments and alterations at the plate. There’s a lot more than sheer brute force to what he does up there and the massive amount of strikeouts is a byproduct of something. What has been missed is the intelligence for the game Howard had even as a minor leaguer.

Howard and Hamels were the best of the bunch until Brown came along. In his first game for Reading last summer, Brown hit a home run that will go down as one of those legendary moments they talk about years from now. The problem with this legend, however, is that there isn’t much room to embellish it. C’mon… Brown hit a ball about as far as a human being could smash a baseball at Reading’s ballpark without it sounding cartoonish or like something conjured in a video game.

Even better than the talent, intelligence and everything else, Brown was grounded. People kept spelling his name wrong but he was too polite to correct them. When he answered questions he used the word, “sir,” and he wasn’t being sarcastic. Know what? Pujols did the same thing a decade ago.

For now Brown is perfect. His first plate appearance ended with an RBI double crashed off the wall. Famed documentarian Ken Burns was even on hand to see it, which hardly seems like a coincidence.

But Brown is also the one player general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. would not part with when he was cleaning out the farm system to get Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. Brown is the chosen one even though Amaro went on Daily News Live last week and plainly stated that the kid wasn’t ready for the big show yet. Perhaps that was just Amaro trying to tamp down expectations in order to keep the hype from overwhelming us. A little breather, if you will.

Oh, but we know better. Amaro had no other way of dodging it. Money is always at the fore and guys like Brown (and Howard before him) have the natural flow of their development slowed in order to keep that arbitration and free agency clock from ticking. It stinks because there’s something truly sinister about those motivated by money over merit, but so far we’ve seen guys like Howard and Utley get theirs after toiling away in the minors for no good reason.

Maybe we are jumping the gun on Brown a little bit. Maybe he’ll be more Burrell and Byrd than Howard or Utley? Baseball has a way of separating the champs from the chumps really quickly. You can go to the bank on that.

But I know what my eyes have seen and I know that Brown made it through every level of pro ball with tons of scouts and management types watching his every move with the intent on prying him away from Philadelphia. There’s a reason why Halladay didn’t pitch for the Phillies in 2009 and it was because there was no way Amaro was giving up Brown to get the best righty pitcher in the majors.

Now both Brown and Halladay are teammates with lockers on the same side of the clubhouse. Chances are they’re going to remain so for a while, too. Needless to say, it’s going to be fun following Charlie’s advice…

“Watch the game.”

How can you not?

Good help will be hard to find

PITTSBURGH — Sometimes the easiest thing to do is alsothe hardest one to accomplish. Yeah, that sounds like a trick or some sort of weird riddle, but really, when one looks at the predicament the Phillies have backed themselves in to, it makes perfect sense.

Yes, Chase Utley likely will be out until September recovering from surgery on his right thumb to reattach the ligament to the bone where it belongs. And yes, Placido Polanco — he of the one who does all the little things — is probably out until August so he can recover from a chronic case of tendonitis in his biceps and a bone spur on his elbow.

Then there is Chooch Ruiz, who we don’t know what to expect. Anyone familiar with Brian Westbrook or Keith Primeau understands how concussions can affect a pro sports career. Considering that Ruiz went to visit one of the preeminent sports concussion specialists in the United States while in Pittsburgh on Thursday, it seems to be a significant development that he was told not to go out on a rehab assignment this weekend. Chooch needs to let things mend for a bit longer and rightfully the Phillies are allowing that to happen.

So that’s a big chunk of the Phillies lineup that will be out indefinitely. Utley, Polanco and Chooch gone with no return date set, though we were assured it would be relatively soon based on basic prognosis and guidelines from the medical people. That’s precisely where it gets complicated, too, because two weeks is plenty of time for a club to watch its season implode.

They say a team can’t win a pennant in [inset a month here], but it most definitely can lose one.

That’s what the Phillies have to guard against. Though it doesn’t seem like it from the bird’s eye view, it’s not unreasonable to believe that the season hangs in the balance, right now. Yes, general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. can stand pat and wait for his guys to mend and/or start to hit. Considering that Utley, Polanco and Chooch are out and the offense is still struggling, it’s made for a maddening first half for the Phillies.

But a combined four RBIs from just two players over the past two games in starts for Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels, including just a lonely one against the last-place Pirates on Thursday night, doesn’t inspire much confidence.

Here’s where he get to the easy and difficult part… yes, it would make sense for Amaro to makea trade to add some power to the lineup while Utley and Polanco get healthy. It also wouldn’t be such a bad idea to get a catcher or some much-needed pitching depth, too. After all, if there is one thing we’ve learned this season it’s that the Phillies are a flawed team. They were a flawed team when they won the World Series in 2008 and when they went back there in 2009, too. The difference is they did a better job at hiding those ugly areas with trades and acquisitions that got them Joe Blanton, Scott Eyre, Matt Stairs, Cliff Lee and Pedro Martinez.

Ideally Amaro would like to follow that pattern again since it has been known to work out pretty well. Plus, sometimes a trade has a way of invigorating a club, kind of like the way getting Lee at the deadline did last year.

All Lee did was put together the greatest postseason by a pitcher in team history since Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1915… and against the Yankees, Dodgers and Rockies, no less.

Obviously the Phillies should go out and make the next big deal in order to keep it together until the big guns get back. Obviously, Amaro is probably wearing out the battery on his Blackberry all day. The problem the GM has, however, isn’t what player to get. That’s generally pretty easy to figure out.

Instead Amaro has a problem with what he can give.

Nope, he doesn’t have much.

He does have Domonic Brown, though. A 22-year-old star-in-the-making recently made the jump to Triple-A where he’s hitting .458 with two homers in seven games going into Thursday’s action. Ideally, the Phillies would like Brown to remain in Allentown for the rest of the summer where he could continue to develop with a September call up in the offing if everything goes well.

Don’t think for a second that the Phillies are going to dangle Brown as trade bait, either. With Jayson Werth in the last year of his contract with a big winter of free agency looming, and the quickly aging Raul Ibanez finished with his current deal after the 2011 season, Brown isn’t going to have to wait too much longer.

But what could speed up the process is if the Phillies keep on struggling with the bats and must make a trade. What do they have to offer? Better yet, if teams know the Phillies are desperate and Amaro is pushing to make a trade, why would any self-respecting GM just make it easy for him?

If the Phillies are hurting and have very little leverage, opposing GMs are going to make them pay.

Back in March we suggested that it might not be a bad idea to shop Werth, which understandably, was greeted with more than a few folks sending messages asking if I had taken leave of my senses. I understood why folks were ripping me and accept that some of them might even make really good points.

But that doesn’t mean my logic was faulty.

Where Amaro has his best options is with Werth and Brown and there is a report out there that this theory is being tested. Knowing that Lee was traded over the winter so that Amaro could replenish the minor league system that saw seven of its top 10 players traded, maybe flipping Werth for some reinforcements is the best card the Phillies have.

Unless Ruben is hiding an ace somewhere.

Adapt, evolve, survive

Well now everything dies baby that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
—Bruce Springsteen

NEW YORK — Now we don’t know what is happening with the Phillies. The issues regarding the collective offensive slump could be one of those fluke things or maybe even something larger at work. We’ll be able to figure out those things at the end of the season when we ask what went wrong or right for this ballclub.

But make no mistake about it… something is wrong with the Phillies these days and walking in to Yankee Stadium for three games beginning tonight is probably not the best remedy. After all, not only do the Yankees have the best record in baseball, but also they are 22-7 at home this season.

So as the Phillies hope for a resurrection and look for a big-time measuring stick, we can only project and ask questions. No, it’s not the best situation, but until something breaks it’s all we have.

The question:

Is this it? Is this 32-29 version of the Phillies — the team that is 6-14 in the last 20 games — what we’re going to have to deal with for the rest of the season? And if so, how did we get here?

No, things don’t look too promising, and though manager Charlie Manuel remains upbeat and continues to trot of the mantra that his guys will hit (and pitch?), secretly he is worried. Why wouldn’t he be? Manuel knows as well as anyone that sometimes the twists and turns of the game have a way of settling in. At some point the trends stop being aberrations or spikes in a chart and become the norm. Just listen to Manuel speak if you need proof. He’ll cite line and verse about a time when the Phillies dropped into an offensive swoon, stayed there and never really wiggled out of it.

It began, Manuel recalls often, with a 20-run explosion in St. Louis in 2008, followed by the thought that the Phillies were on the way to scoring 1,000 runs for the season only to replaced with the reality that the team wasn’t going to score many runs without slugging a home run.

Worse, the great hitting coach’s team went on to win the World Series that year not by slugging past teams, but with pitching and defense.

Of all the indignities!

In the meantime the numbers are pretty harrowing. Worse, the owners of some of the ugliest digits are the players the Phillies can least afford to post them. After tying Reggie Jackson's World Series record with five homers in last October's Fall Classic, Chase Utley has dropped off considerably. Though he clubbed 10 homers in the first two months of the season, the All-Star second baseman has not hit one since May 20, a span of 21 games. Uglier yet, Utley has batted just .153 in that span. That's far worse than the .230 with two homers Ryan Howard has provided over the last 20 games or the .164 average and lone homer from free-agent to be, Jayson Werth in that same period.

As the manager might say, “Not good…”

The most alarming of the team-wide slumps is with Utley, who looks as if he is a marathoner who hit the wall. It’s not that Utley isn’t posting the numbers because sometimes that can be subjective and/or not an accurate measure. No, the part that Utley barely has warning track power anymore is what is strange. Last year Utley was whipped at the end of the season because had off-season hip surgery, rushed to get back to the lineup and then played in 156 regular-season games and 15 more in the playoffs. It was understandable for a guy to wear down under those circumstances.

However, how could Utley look so tired just 59 games into this season considering Manuel promised to give his second baseman more days off during the season? Instead, because of the Phillies’ struggles it’s become a vicious cycle. Manuel can’t rest Utley because the team needs to win games, but by continually trotting him out there he has begun to take the shape of a pencil worn down to the nub.

There are other variables at work, too. For instance, pitchers appear to have regrouped after being bludgeoned during the so-called “Steroid Era.” In making up for lost time and fighting back against ballparks built to cater to baseball’s lost age, the big-league pitchers have mounted an insurrection with three no-hitters and two perfect games already this season. Those tallies would be four and three if Jim Joyce hadn’t missed a call at first base in Detroit two weeks ago.

Like any living species, pitchers adapt and evolve. So after more than a decade of being treated like chum for hitters, the tables have turned. For a team filled with talented yet strikeout-prone and flawed hitters like the Phillies, opponents finally appear to be exploiting certain weaknesses.

All of those theories and questions only create more theories and questions. Still, the only question that matters in the short term is to wonder how quickly can the Phillies adjust, adapt and evolve.  Because if the answer is not, “very quickly,” what we see might just be what we’re going to get.

Who? No really, who?

When I was a kid I figured I heard Ronald Reagan’s name spoken every single day. Whether I consciously paid attention to hearing it, or simply caught it in passing, I was certain that a day had not passed without at least one utterance of that name.

I felt the same way about George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and now with Barack Obama. George W. Bush? Well, yeah, but mostly as a punch line.

Cable TV was more accessible during the Reagan years, which was the impetus of our media saturation and 24-hour connectivity. Of course no one foresaw the coming of the Internet during the Reagan years other than Doc Brown and Marty McFly, though they had the luxury of a time machine. And as we have learned, the Internet is the greatest invention since Tommy John surgery.

So Ronald Reagan taught me that everyday folks like to talk about people they will never, ever meet and/or don’t care a whit about them like a president, congressman, or Lady Gaga. Ina sense, the common man and the cultural star use each other. One uses the other to sell something which in turn forces the regular people to use the seller in a manner that makes them feel better about themselves. In other words, everybody wins.

Or do they? Since the gulf between the two factions grow with each passing TMZ post, each side digs in deeper and deeper. Agendas are forced with no regard for the other side. That’s just the way it happens when a group feels slighted.

In our little universe here in Philadelphia, Donovan McNabb is our new Ronald Reagan. Not a day passes when something is not spoken or written about the man or his importance and future to the professional football team in the city. Go ahead and comb through the daily stories about the Eagles on CSNPhilly.com or Philly.com and I’m positive there will be one mention of McNabb in something produced today. Turn on 610 or 950 and set an egg timer and wait…

Someone will say the words, “Donovan,” or “McNabb.”

The difficulty in this phenomenon is when a guy thinks he is part of one group, though in reality he is not. That’s where Mike Richards of the Flyers enters.

I get the feeling that Mike Richards could walk down Walnut Street and grab a seat in Rittenhouse Square and no one would bat an eye. Probably a shade below 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, Richards looks just like any regular 24-year-old dude seen in the city. He probably blends in in Kenora, Ontario, too, which is probably why he thinks he can non-discretely go about his business in Philadelphia.

INSERT HEARTY LAUGH RIGHT HERE

What Richards might not get—or maybe he does, we don’t know—is that a $69 million contract and the captaincy of the beloved Flyers means he is not a regular dude. Yes, celebrity is both a blessing and a curse and it’s because of these reasons that he is clearly not amongst the regular-dude folk and because he is not “regular,” if he chooses not to talk to the media, for whatever reason, some folks are going to feel slighted or even angry. McNabb or Chase Utley might give obtuse, one-word answers to pointed questions from time to time, but after some prodding and long waits, at least he goes through the motions complete with a bemused grin and a placid stare on non-engagement.

It works for him.

Now I don’t know about the finer details of Richards’ tête-à-tête with the writers that cover the team on a daily basis. I also don’t know anything about Richards’ private life and what he does for fun.

I also don’t care.

Really…

I.

Don’t.

Care.

However, Richards can make his life a whole lot less complex if he figures out how to do things like Chase Utley or Donovan McNabb and mask his contempt for those commoners with a steady barrage of clichés and bleep-eating grins.

It's worth mentioning that the time McNabb told Terrell Owens to, "Keep my name out of your mouth..." That was awesome.

So now we’re talking about Mike Richards for a couple of days in a row. Better yet, some people may (or may not) have learned who he is because of the recent media storm. Probably not too many more, though. It’s not like he’s Donovan McNabb.

World Series: When Reggie met Chase

NEW YORK—When people think of Reggie Jackson’s baseball career, inevitably the three-homer performance in Game 6 of the 1977 is the first moment that comes to mind. Three pitches have not just defined a man’s professional career, but also his life.

Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth are the only players to hit three home runs in a World Series game, and Jackson was the only player to hit five homers in a single World Series.

Until now.

Chase Utley, playing for the team Jackson followed as a kid while growing up in Wyncote, Montgomery County, tied the all-time record for homers in a series when he belted a pair in Game 5 at Citizens Bank Park. For Utley, it was the second multi-homer game of the series, which also ties a record set by Willie Mays Aikens who had a pair of two-homer games in the 1980 series against the Phillies.

But aside from the home runs and the clutch performances in the World Series, there really isn’t much that Jackson and Utley have in common. Oh sure, both players are known for their streakiness and strikeouts. After all, not only has Utley homered in five straight regular-season games during his career, but he also struck out five straight times in the 2007 NLDS, including four times in one game on 13 pitches.

Jackson, of course, struck out more times than any player in the history of the game. The thing about that is Jackson’s strikeouts were just as epic as his home runs. Nope, Jackson did not get cheated.

“I was known for postseason, not what I did in the regular season and I had great years,” Jackson said. “But you play to win. Our club, our organization is just hell-bent, from our ownership to our general manager. They’ve built it to win here. The conversations that we have are about winning a championship.”

Utley hasn’t been cheated either. Though Jackson pointed out that the ballparks in Philadelphia and New York are “small,” Utley hasn’t hit any squeakers. The homers Utley hit in Game 5 were gone by the time he made contact. In fact, Utley uncharacteristically pulled a bit a Reggie on his first-inning homer on Monday night when he flipped his bat aside and watched it sail toward the right-field fence ever-so briefly.

Jackson, of course, was famous for posturing on his homers. His style was the antithesis of Utley’s but as far as that goes, Jackson is a huge fan of the Phillies’ second baseman. In fact, Jackson greeted Utley when the Phillies came out on the field for batting practice before Game 6 on Wednesday to congratulate him on tying the record.

As far as the comparison between the two World Series home run kings go, that’s about all they have in common. Jackson demanded attention on and off the field. Utley gets the attention because of what he does on the field. He’s not interesting in having it any other way.

“We’re different type of players,” Jackson said. “But he hit 30 home runs, [and] that’s a lot of home runs. I don’t want to compare he and I. He’s a great hitter. But it’s not about style—it’s about winning. That’s what is important.”

Said manager Charlie Manuel about Utley: “Actually he don't like for you to say a whole lot of things about him. But he's one of the most prepared, one of the most dedicated, he has the most desire and passion to play the game that I've ever been around.”

After the brief conversation with Utley, Jackson walked away even more impressed, especially when Mr. October was told that the record only matters if the Phillies win the World Series.

Otherwise, who cares?

“He’s old school,” Jackson said about Utley. “When you talk to Chase Utley and hear what he focuses on, he really doesn’t care to talk about it much. They’re down 3-2 and that’s where he’s at, and I admire that. I admire that professionalism.”

The notion that Utley could become the first World Series MVP to come from a losing team since Bobby Richardson got the award when the Yankees lost to the Pirates in seven games, has been quite popular. Certainly Utley has to be a candidate on the strength of belting five homers in the first five games, but Jackson got the sense that the All-Star second baseman wouldn’t want the award if the Phillies did not win the World Series.

“You have to win the World Series,” Jackson said. “I don’t want the MVP award if I don’t win. I don’t care—I’d want to win [the award], but you play to win. What was it that Herman Edwards said, ‘You play to win the game.’

“It’s all really about winning. You’d rather hit three home runs and win the World Series then hit seven and not. You have to win, the rest of it doesn’t matter much.”

Utley is trying to make it all matter. Plus, he could have two more games to break Reggie’s record… if he does it, will Utley get a candy bar named after him, too?

World Series: Mr. October meets Mr. November

Searching for an answer

ATLANTA – The clubhouse workers had just packed up all of the laptops and loaded them on the truck bound for the airport. Meanwhile, the giant TV pushed just off the center of the room at Turner Field was snapped off so the only noise coming from the visitors’ room at Turner Field emanated from players packing up their gear and water trickling out of the showers. But the important elements were that the laptops were packed away and the eerie silence that shrouds the room after a lost baseball game. Without those laptops, Chase Utley didn’t know what to do with himself. How could he study game video into the early hours of the morning without those laptops?

So still dressed in his post-game workout gear, Utley was forced to move from the folding table that held the bank of computers to the overstuffed couches arranged around the television in the middle of the room. It was there he sat quietly and stared straight ahead into nothing.

The TV was off.

No music played.

The shower was waiting and a bus ride to the airport quickly approaching but he still didn’t budge.

He just stared straight ahead.

Utley got a hit and barreled into catcher Brian McCann in order to score the Phillies’ first run on Thursday night in one of those plays that kind of personifies the way the All-Star second baseman plays the game. Arriving at the plate at the exact moment as the throw from the outfield, Utley chose to take home plate by force rather than finesse his way around the catcher with a hook slide of sorts. Focused on catching the ball, McCann was left wide open to Utley’s assault as he was forcefully separated from the ball.

Call it one the hard way.

Still, not even Utley’s forced grit could will the Phillies to a much-needed victory. Perhaps the 14^th loss in the last 18 games is the reason why Utley sat still and stared straight ahead.

Thinking.

Stewing.

Where are those damn laptops!?

“Times like this can build character for a team,” he said a good 45-minutes later as he dressed for the trip home. “That's the way I look at it.”

If anyone knew how to solve the losing ways and malaise engulfing the baseball team it was Utley. Chances are he wasn’t merely sitting there like David Puddy from that Seinfeld episode where Elaine Benes’ boyfriend wiled away the time on a flight simply staring out into the middle distance.

Remember that one?

Elaine: Do you want something to read?

Puddy: No.

Elaine: Are you going to sleep?

Puddy: No.

Elaine: Are you just going to sit there and stare?

Puddy: Yeah, that’s right.

But Utley isn’t going to prod his teammates to follow his lead by calling them out to the press. Instead he’ll reinforce the positive with all the normal clichés, though privately – just like with manager Charlie Manuel – the pile of losses are killing him.

“I feel like we're coming to the park prepared,” Utley said. “We obviously haven’t been playing that well, but we haven't seen a change in our attitude for the negative. It’s obviously a rough stretch. We're definitely not making any excuses, but we do need to start playing better in all parts of the ball: offensively, defensively. We need to pitch better. That's the bottom line. How do you do that? You stay motivated. You stay positive.”

That’s what Utley does. He shows up early and stares at those laptops looking for any tiny bit of minutia or insight that the naked eye cannot catch. Then he’ll take batting practice until the calluses on his hands get calloused.

After the game he might take more batting practice or workout, but mostly he stares into those laptops watching the ballgame he just played until his eyes are ringed with bleary red tiredness. Maybe then he’ll go home and to do it all over again the next day.

“You have to come to the field every day to prepare and prepare to win,” he said.

Sometimes it isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Utley plays

CLEARWATER, Fla. -- Yessir, as first reported by yours truly of CSNPhilly.com and Todd Cougar Zolecki of Phillies.com, Chase Utley played in a minor league game this afternoon at the Carpenter Complex. I'm working on the details of the story now, so be sure to keep clicking back right here for all the particulars and some blurry camera phone pictures.

Meanwhile, Utley went 2-for-4 with a ground-rule double and a pair of whiffs in his first two ABs. Aftewards, Zo and I chatted up Utley about the return and it appears as if the recovery is still on track.

Also, Brad Lidge and Chad Durbin both pitched an inning each during the minor-league game. Lidge gave up a two-out double and had a strikeout in his inning, while Durbin was perfect. He even struck out some dude with "Utley" on a pitch that the All-Star complained was too nasty for this time of year.

So yeah, more is on the way...

Going, going, gone?

So far, the 2008 season has bordered on "magical" for Phillies' all-everything second baseman Chase Utley. Last night he slugged his Major League-leading 21st home run in the first inning and then chipped in with a pair of singles and two diving catches to save the Phillies' 5-4 victory over the Cincinnati Reds. More than that, Utley smashed a homer in the fifth straight game to tie the franchise record for homers in consecutive games. Better yet, it was the second time this season that Utley has homered in five straight games.

More?

Well, check it out:

• He is second in the league with 38 extra-base hits.
• He is hitting .419 (13 for 31) with seven homers and 20 RBIs in his last eight games.
• He is second in the National League with 52 RBIs, runs with 48 and slugging percentage at .680.
• He is fourth in the league in OPS at 1.083.
• He is 11th in the league in hitting at .320 and doubles with 16.

Moreover, Utley leads all National Leaguers in the balloting for the All-Star Game and has to be one of the top two early candidates for the MVP voting even though there are nearly four months left in the season.

If Utley weren't (intentionally?) the worst interview in all of professional sports, maybe we'd be witnessing a Jeter and/or A-Rod in the making. You know, a HUGE superstar...

Nevertheless, it has been Utley's home-run hitting that has been the most eye-opening facet of his game this season. With 21 bombs, he has already equaled last season's total and can tie his tally from 2006 with one more blast. Prior to that, Utley slugged a career-best 32 in 2005, which is right about where the Phillies' brass had him pegged when he was drafted in the first round out of UCLA in June of 2000.

"I didn't envision him being able to get up around 30," assistant general manager Mike Arbuckle told ESPN.com's Jerry Crasnick. "As he matured and developed more strength in his hands and forearms, he generated more bat speed. That was the element we were light on."

Charlie Manuel, one of the game's most notable hitting gurus, gets as giddy as a schoolgirl when talking about Utley's smooth, compact and pure swing. After last night's game he talked about the alacrity in which line drives rocket off his second-baseman's bat and how those liners seem to be just high enough to find the seats beyond the right-field fence.

“He’s hitting line drives high. He’s hitting it hard and they’re high enough to go out,” Manuel said, noting that statistics like batting average and home runs usually have a way of evening out in the end, as well as his theory that “a home run is nothing more than a well-hit fly ball that lands on the other side of the fence.”

So what about those "well-hit fly balls?" How does wiry and sinewy Chase Utley rip all those homers?

Maybe it's the ballpark?

According to the great Hit Tracker web site, Utley is tied for the Major League lead for "Lucky Homers" with Alfonso Soriano, and is third in the Majors in "Just Enough" blasts. Based on the way the good folks at Hit Tracker crunch the numbers and figure in all the variables, Utley probably should have just a maximum of 16 homers.

Sixteen home runs on June 2 is a total that would be second in the National League and certainly nothing to sneeze at. But perhaps a bigger factor is that 16 of Utley's 21 homers have come in Citizens Bank Park, though two of his "Just Enough" homers have come on the road in Cincinnati and Milwaukee.

Still, Manuel probably says it best:

"If we didn’t have Chase Utley we wouldn’t be where we’re at," Manuel said.

Threepeat?

When Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins were awarded the MVP in consecutive seasons, it was hardly original. After all the fact is there were different players from the same team that won back-to-back MVP awards lots of times. Actually, it's not even all that uncommon. But if, say, Chase Utley were to be the MVP for the 2008 season - now that would be something.

Since the Base Ball Writers Association of America wisely started handing out post-season awards, three different players took home MVP honors in consecutive seasons just four times.

In the National League, from 1938 to 1940, the Cincinnati Reds had Ernie Lombardi, Bucky Walters and Frank McCormick were first to pull off the feat. After a Brooklyn Dodger won in 1941, the St. Louis Cardinals' triple threat of Mort Cooper, Stan Musial and Marty Marion did it.

In the American League, Yankees Joe DiMaggio, Joe Gordon and Spuds Chandler won the MVP from 1941 to 1943. Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle and Elston Howard did it again for the Yanks from 1961 to 1963. Add in Maris' MVP Award from 1960 and that's the only instance where three different players from the same team won four MVP Awards.

Are the Phillies next? Certainly Utley is making a strong case, though, of course, there are 111 games remaining in the season. Actually, though, Utley still leads the National League with 16 homers (on pace for 49) and is fourth with 42 RBIs (128 pace) despite scuffling through a 12-game span where he went 6-for-43(.1395).

In the eight games since snapping his funk, Utley is 10-for-31 with two homers and 11 RBIs. Not bad. Obviously, though, yesterday's six-RBIs outing with three hits inflated the numbers, but that's baseball.

The point is Utley is good. With Lance Berkman and Chipper Jones, Utley is right there.

Monday night rewind

Monday was one of those epic days in sports where everything kind of fell into place the way everyone expected. Robert Cheruiyot dominated the Boston Marathon... again.

The Flyers went from a 3-1 lead in a best-of-seven series to a do-or-die Game 7... again.

And Chase Utley hit a home run and made some clutch plays to lead the Phillies to a victory... again.

You know - no big whoop.

Anyway, Cheruiyot won his fourth Boston against a weaker field than in past years. One reason for that is because the top American runners either ran in the Olympic Trials last November (or London two weeks ago) or will run in the track Trials in July. So unlike the past handful of years where the elite Americans showed up and ran with Cheruiyot for a little bit, this year there were other things going on.

Additionally, guys like Ryan Hall and the fastest runners in the world went to London where the course is much more forgiving, the competition fierce and fast times are inevitable. Boston's course beats the hell out the quads and calves with the undulating terrain. No, Boston isn't exactly a slow course - there is a net downhill, after all. There are parts of the route from Hopkinton to Boston where runners actually have to hold back to avoid going too fast.

In contrast, the uphill climbs in Newton come at a point where a runner's glycogen stores are just about gone. They don't call them Heartbreak Hill for nothing. Hell, I recall doing workouts through the Newton hills and attacked the famed (infamous?) Heartbreak Hill fresh and it gave me a little kick in the ass. Imagine spending miles 16 to 21 of a marathon trying to get over those hills.

Lance Armstrong, who mastered Alpe d'Huez (among others) during his seven Tour de France victories, ran his first Boston yesterday. From the sound of it, Armstrong got a little boot to the rear in Newton though it should be noted that he ran negative splits for a respectable 2:50:58.

According to the Associated Press:

Armstrong said there's no comparison between running a marathon and cycling, either physically or mentally.

"You can't compare the pounding or running with the efficiency of a bicycle," he said. "Nothing even comes close to comparing the pain, especially it seems like this course, with a significant amount of downhills ... that really take their toll on the muscles."

But Boston is not exactly a world-record course, either. Cheruiyot was on course-record pace yesterday, casually ripping through miles 3 to 19 in 4:53 or faster. That includes a 4:37 at mile 19 that obliterated the rest of the field. However, Cheruiyot "slowed" over the final 10k to finish in 2:07:43, well off his record 2:07:14 he set in 2006. Interestingly, Cheruiyot's fourth victory in Boston was only the fifth winning time under 2:08 in the 112 years of the race.

Compare that to the London Marathon this year where the top six in the 2008 race ran under 2:07 and it's easy to see why the best runners don't show up to Boston (or New York) any more. Why go get beat up when Chicago, London and Berlin have (relative) cakewalk courses?

Nevertheless, Boston and its sponsors might have to dig into the coffers to lure the big guns away from London in the spring. The fact that Haile Gebrselasie, Paul Tergat, Martin Lel, Khalid Khannouchi - and worse - Ryan Hall, have not lined up on Patriot's Day in Hopkinton proves that Boston is missing something.

Sure, runners like London because of the speedy course and the chance for fast times. But more than anything else runners go where the best competition is. That hasn't been Boston for a long time.

*** Elsewhere, it's Game 7 night in Washington where most folks seem to have a bad feeling about the fate of the Flyers.

There. That's the depth of my hockey analysis.

*** Had Chase Utley not broken his hand last season, Jimmy Rollins probably wouldn't have won the MVP Award. Chances are Utley would have been in the top three with Prince Fielder and Matt Holliday. So noting that it was Utley's injury that pushed Rollins into the MVP discussion in 2007, it's kind of ironic that Rollins' injury has the spotlight on Utley.

Then again, six homers in five straight games kind of gets a ballplayer noticed...

Plus, it's only April 22, too. There is a lot of baseball to go.

Nevertheless, Utley is off to one of those stop-what-your-doing-when-he-comes-up starts. So far he has reached base in all but one of the Phillies' 20 games, has posted gaudy numbers in categories that all the stat geeks love, and seems to have his hand in the outcome of every game.

Things happen whenever Utley is on the field. But then again that's not new.

Remember when Ryan Howard used to be that way?

Anyway, during his pre-game powwow with the writers prior to last night's game at Coors Field, the Wilmington News Journal's Scott Lauber reports this quote from manager Charlie Manuel:

"Chase Utley is a very, very, very tough player. I've been in the game a long time, and he's as tough as any player I've seen. I'm talking about old throwback players, guys like Pete Rose and Kirby Puckett. You could put Utley in that category. He could play with any of them."

So there's that... which is nice.

The clown show is on hiatus

Note: Beginning now this site is going on a two-week hiatus. As most regular readers know, my wife and I are expecting our second child (a boy) any day. But now that we are more than a week past the due date and since her cervix is like one of those old-fashioned steel bear traps, the natural process needs some prodding. Therefore, we go to the hospital on Thursday night with the hope of delivering the big boy on Friday.

It should be noted that Friday is also the birth day for Yasser Arafat, Vince McMahon, Cal Ripken Jr., Reggie Miller and Dave Chappelle.

Anyway, I will be checking in from time to time, but I will not return with regular posts until September 7. When we return expect something of a new look, structure and organization… maybe even a redesign, too.

Like anyone who has devoted time to baseball, I know that statistics are not worth the paper they are printed on. They lie and can be manipulated to prove bogus points. Statistics also cannot quantify health, heart, ability and whether or not someone has put hard workouts to be prepared for a long season. Plus, stats don’t go into the clubhouse and get a feel of the mood of the room or have to go face-to-face with a player it may have lied about.

Statistics are cowards. Sports are for playing, not watching – we hold these truths to be self evident.

But sometimes it is difficult to debate the statistics. For instance, in pushing the streak of not winning a series in Pittsburgh since June of 2001, the Phillies were outscored by the Pirates 15-2 from the seventh inning on last weekend at PNC Park or whatever the hell corporation owns the naming rights now.

Yeah, that’s right, 15-2… against the Pirates… the worst team in the National League.

So I’m going to cherry pick that one specific statistic to show that the Phillies might not have the pitching needed to get to the playoffs. Then again, it wasn’t like anyone needed a stat for that.

Pitching aside, the Phillies should have a really good idea of how the last month of the season will play out at the end of the next 10 days. With three games against the Dodgers and three more against both the Padres and the Mets – the two teams the Phillies are chasing in different playoff races – the playoff race is right in front of the team.

For the Phillies, 5-5 is treading water, 6-4 is reasonable; and 7-3 and better is ideal. But anything worse than .a 500 homestand could be the beginning of the beginning of the end.

According to Ryan Howard the Phillies control their own destiny... they also take them one game at a time and give 110 percent.

“This is a big series for us and the good thing is that we control our own destiny,” Howard said before Tuesday’s game against the Dodgers. “There will be a little bit of scoreboard watching going on, but most of it will be us trying to handle our own business.”

Scoreboard watching, huh?

“The scoreboard sits right there in front of us so we can’t help but not look at it,” manager Charlie Manuel said on Tuesday. “It’s about that time of the year and that can be good.”

***
Meanwhile, Chase Utley could return in a week after being cleared to take some swings with a bat for the first time after breaking his wrist at the end of July.

“(I) took some swings off the tee – started with the fungo and moved to my regular bat. I didn’t swing 100 percent but it felt pretty good,” Utley offered.

Based on his recovery from day to day, Utley hopes to add a little more volume to his workouts as he looks to his return.

***
But the injury bug has reared its head again… Cole Hamels has been scratched from tomorrow’s start with some left elbow tenderness. From the initial, knee-jerk reaction it doesn’t seem to be anything other than late-season tiredness, but pitchers’ arms are quite mysterious.

Regardless, Hamels is being diagnosed with a mild elbow strain and will have a precautionary MRI tomorrow.

“He was up front with us so I hope we got it early,” pitching coach Rich Dubee said.

***
Though one current Dodger pitcher once told me that “sometimes injuries just happen,” I respectfully disagreed. Injuries always happen for a reason – sometimes we can’t figure out what the reason is, but as our boy Floyd said, all it takes is the proper training:

“There's only one rule: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins. Period. Because you won't die. Even though you feel like you'll die, you don't actually die. Like when you're training, you can always do one more. Always. As tired as you might think you are, you can always, always do one more.

“If you overtrained, it means that you didn't train hard enough to handle that level of training. So you weren't overtrained; you were actually undertrained to begin with. So there's the rule again: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins."”

Learn it. Live it. Love it.

As the Phillies turn

There are so many underlying themes and subplots with these Phillies that it makes a day with the team seem as if one were watching a mini-series. Swing a dead cat and hurl it through the Phillies’ clubhouse and chances are it will bean a would-be story in the melon.

But the main premise with the Phillies remains unchanged. It’s all about injuries and pitching, folks.

In Thursday’s series finale in Chicago the injury bugged showed that it wasn’t just monopolized by the initiated. No, it appears as if all one has to do is pull on a Phillies uniform and something crazy will happen. Kyle Lohse, the new starting the pitcher the Phillies picked up in a trade from the Reds on Monday had his Phillies’ suit on for just 29 pitches and one inning before he got all nicked up by a line drive off his forearm.

How long he’ll be out is anyone’s guess.

“Just the way it welted up right away, I knew they weren't going to let me go out there and chance it,” Lohse told reporters after the 10-6 victory over the Cubs. “We'll see how it goes. I don't think it's serious enough for the DL, but it was pretty bad.”

Lohse is hardly the biggest problem for manager Charlie Manuel and general manager Pat Gillick. Far from it, in fact. The Phillies stayed in the playoffs chase without Lohse, chances are they will stay close to the first-place Mets with him doing his best Danny Tartabull impression.

Nevertheless, it’s a fun little exercise to imagine how much better the Phillies could be had the injuries not plagued the team so thoroughly – and by fun we mean in the same manner as pouring a can of paint thinner on top of a bon fire. You know, Beavis & Butthead stuff.

Think about what would have happened this week if Chase Utley had not been beaned by that pitch at the Bank last week. Certainly Gillick would have never gone out and traded for Tadahito Iguchi even though he didn’t really have to give up much to get him. More importantly there’s a strong possibility that Ryan Howard would not be in such a swoon if Utley were still hitting ahead of him in the lineup.

“Teams probably are not going to give me anything to hit even more now,” Howard forecasted soon after Utley’s injury. “It's definitely going to be hard with him not being here, the way he works pitchers and has such good ABs.”

With Utley on the shelf, Howard is 5-for-26 (.192) with three RBIs, no homers and 15 strikeouts. Clearly Howard is trying to carry the load with Utley out, though he dismissed the idea when the subject was broached by a few of the li’l newshounds travelling around with the team. However, Manuel believes it just could be the case just as he admitted it was the case in the beginning of the season when Howard got off to a slow start before landing on the disabled list in May.

Meanwhile, one of those underlying themes that could become a major focus if the Phillies are still in the hunt a month from now remains the right arm of reliever Tom Gordon. The veteran right-hander pitched on Thursday afternoon and was able to hand over a lead to closer Brett Myers despite giving up a run, two hits and a walk in the eighth inning, but that wasn’t the case the night before.

Gordon complained of shoulder tightness before the game and informed Manuel that he wasn’t available, which didn’t really work out too well. As a result, Myers came in to pitch in the ninth inning of a tied game (on the road), and had he been able to get out of the inning J.D. Durbin was set to come in and pitch until ol’ Mother Leary’s cows came home to Chicago.

The coincidental part of that is Durbin was brought in to be the long man today when Lohse was knocked out after just one inning.

So maybe it all worked out?

Maybe. Maybe not. Myers likely would have escaped the inning last night had the injured Michael Bourn been available to play left field instead of Jayson Werth when Matt Murton’s sinking liner dropped in for a double.

Anyway, there’s a lot of that woulda, coulda, shoulda stuff going on with the Phillies these days. You know, kind of like Beavis & Butthead.

Fire! Fire! Fire!

***
Tomorrow (or maybe later) we finally get to Barry Bonds and David Walsh’s book.

We should also mention that Pat Burrell is hitting hell out of the ball these days... if we rip him when he's bad, it's only fair to point out when he's playing well.

The Philadelphia MASH Unit

Aaron Rowand is out of the lineup for Friday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Pirates because he hurt his shoulder playing tag with the kids from his neighborhood last night after the loss to the Nationals at the Bank.

There are a lot ways to go with this one, such as was the kid wearing a suit of armor? Good thing he wasn’t playing kick the can or else he could have ended up like Jon Lieber…

You see, the possibilities are endless.

Either way it's good to know that when Aaron Rowand plays tag with the kids from the neighborhood, he leaves it all out there. Frankly the Phillies are lucky he didn't run into a fence when chasing down some kid.

“I guess it’s be careful when you play with your kids,” manager Charlie Manuel said.

Nevertheless, when it rains it pours with the Phillies. Earlier today Chase Utley had surgery to repair the broken fourth metacarpal in his right hand in which a pin was inserted to the damaged area. The entire procedure took 20 minutes at Methodist Hospital by Dr. Randall Culp and the MVP candidate is expected recovery time is four weeks.

Joe Thurston’s contract has been purchased to replace Utley on the roster, though it appears as if the Phillies will have to make another move soon since the team announced that they had acquired Tadahito Iguchi from the Chicago White Sox this afternoon.

Along with a full cadre of Japanese media, Iguchi brings a .251 batting average, six homers and 31 RBIs in 90 games with him from Chicago. He also brings along a World Series ring from the 2005 season where he and Rowand helped the ChiSox to their first title in a long, long time.

Interestingly, Iguchi and Manuel are both veterans of Japan’s Pacific League. Manuel played for Kinetsu while Iguchi played for Fukuoka and Daiei.

To get Iguchi, the Phillies sent Single-A right-hander Michael Dubee – pitching coach Rich Dubee’s son – to the White Sox.

Iguchi is expected to arrive in Philadelphia tomorrow.

Anyway, with Rowand out, Michael Bourn will lead off and play center against the Pirates tonight. Abraham Nunez is at second for Utley, Pat Burrell was bumped up a spot from sixth to fifth, while Jimmy Rollins moved from leadoff to third. When Rowand returns – he’s day-to-day – Manuel says Shane Victorino will leadoff, Greg Dobbs will hit second and Rollins will remain in the No. 3 hole.

Half empty

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of people: there are the half full types who always find the silver lining, and there is the half empty gang that believes that things will end badly.

More often than not I fall into the half full category. Typically, things work out the way they are supposed to in the end. Yet at the same time I’m a realist and when it comes to the Phillies the glass isn’t just half empty, it’s filled with cigarette butts and the toxic water from the Schuylkill.

I don’t know… maybe the 1-for-124 has something to do with it.

Anyway, there were times in the past handful of seasons where I really believed that the Phillies would make the playoffs. Like the time when Jim Thome hit that home run through the teeth of an approaching hurricane to beat the Marlins at Vet in 2003.

Or when David Bell hit that home run to beat the Reds in Cincinnati on a September night, coupled with the 10-run ninth inning to beat Dontrelle Willis and the Marlins in 2005. Those were half full times.

Inevitably Jeff Conine goes on a tear to crush the Phillies during the last week of the season in 2003. Billy Wagner gives up the home run to Craig Biggio in 2005. A game starts at 11 p.m. at RFK and Chase Utley’s home run is ruled foul by the umps in 2006.

For the Phillies, bleep always happens. Always.

Like yesterday when a punk kid in his first ever big league game drills Utley on the knuckles and busted up his hand. Not just any hand, mind you, it was the right hand of the man who was well on his way to one of the greatest seasons ever by a second baseman. He’s on pace for 27 homers, 216 hits, 66 doubles, 132 RBIs and 127 runs.

Then there are the things that can’t be measured by statistics, such as Utley is the heart-and-soul of the club. That stuff matters, folks.

So what now? Obviously, the Phillies suffer without Utley on the field and in the lineup, and if he is out for longer than the month he and the Phillies initially offered, things could deteriorate quickly.

And I’m the optimist… usually.

I’m sure there are some statgeeks out there trying to crunch the numbers to quantify Utley’s affect on the team’s lineup and I’m sure the numbers can be spun to read just about anything. However, the point of the matter is that without Utley getting on base and wreaking havoc, Ryan Howard won’t see anything to hit anymore.