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Utley’s Slide: Leadership Or Carelessness?
Posted by Tim Malcolm, Wed, September 03, 2008 10:31 AM
Last night Chase Utley showed leadership by example by plowing over Nationals catcher Jesus Flores.
Well, Phillies fans all think it was leadership. As did Charlie Manuel:
“I wish every one of my players would play that way. That would be good. Don’t say ‘old school.’ That’s good school. That’s the way you play the game. Unless you want to put some rouge and makeup and lipstick on you.”
Here are Nationals fans’ opinions.
From Nationals Inquisition: “This is sadly the bush league play to expect from the team from Philadelphia. I guess when you know your going to choke, you try to make yourself feel better.”
From Nats320: “At 7:46PM The Silence Began. The Air had been completely sucked out of New Nationals Park. Enthusiasm for Our Washington Nationals–so high when this game started–now gone.”
Nationals Enquirer: “Chase Utley: dirty player, or just playing the game ‘the right way’? Quick, someone get some real ‘baseball men’ on the line! Upon further review, we’re ok with it.”
Finally, Nationals manager Manny Acta, via the Post: “We looked at the video several times. We didn’t think it was a dirty play.”
Ryan Zimmerman agreed.
So one pretty angry (bitter?) fan, one sad fan, and a bunch of “the play was OK” quotes. I’m with the very latter — it was a heady, physical, rough play that is definitely legal and definitely indicative of Utley’s all-out mentality.
To me, it mirrored the Eric Bruntlett slide on Yadier Molina. Hopefully the result is a reverse effect of that slide, which preceded the Phils long mid-summer dive.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
They talked about it on Baseball Tonight, and not one of those guys said anything about it being a dirty play. Utley has a reputation for playing the game hard.. ala Pete Rose… so he gets the benefit of the doubt. If Milton Bradley did that, they would all call it a dirty play though.
More than anything it was a dumb play, and a terrible “slide”.. he’s lucky he didn’t bust up his shoulder on that play
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:41 am
True. John Kruk said it wasn’t smart doing it, especially with Howard at the plate (he doubled in that at bat in the fourth). But Utley saw something, went for it — you try it once.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:44 am
You can’t blame him for trying it.. but sometimes being overly-aggresive gets you OUT. Utley is usually a very smart player, but Kruk’s point about it being a Right-handed 1stbaseman, and not having to pivot around to throw the ball home is the kind of thing that Utley usually picks up on.
I guess you can’t knock him for trying it, but that slide/dive could’ve gotten him hurt pretty bad.. so it just wasn’t smart in my opinion
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:44 am
why are we even listening to anything nationals fans have to say about anything the phillies do? I’m not calling the phils a world series team, but the nats are 35 games under .500. Shut up and get run over, it’s been happening to you all season.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:54 am
Im ok with that. Thats real baseball, guys. Putting yourself on the line for the team. Im COMPLETELY ok with that. this is the type of thing these guys lack and need more of. they need to bean more people too.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:04 am
I’m anxious to see how the Nats react tonight. Do they go after Chase or someone else? I would hate to see anyone hurt or a fight break out when it means so much to us and nothing to them. Then again, maybe a good bench clearer would bring this team even closer together for the stretch run. Utley plays the game hard and with 2-outs he took a chance. I would rather see him plow into the catcher like that than try some silly hook slide. I love Cholly’s quote about makeup and lipstick!! He is not exactly PC is he??
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:08 am
Utley gets thrown at everygame so it wouldn’t be anyhting out of the ordinary if they responded tonight
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 am
I think if this play happened say 50 years ago people would not blink twice - which I think way older players do not see anything wrong with it and younger ones do. But we are in an age of baseball where there are more babies than ballplayers. It is interesting that with today’s methods of training, diet, and ways to prevent injuries that more players sit-out because their hamstring is a little tender. You would not see that in the 1950s and you would not see someone (ala Jroll) not hustling. Utley’s slide was stupid because it was not a do-or-die play nor did it take place in October; not to mention that Utley means a lot to this team.
I think it was a clean play there was no intent to injury. True baseball is played in a hard nose, utley gets that and unfortunately he is one of the few that gets it. Others are more concerned with incentives and their own well being then truly going all out. And you would think with the way the Nats have been played this year they would be used to being run over!
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 am
It was a hard-nose play, nothing dirty about it.
Looking at the play, I didn’t really see where he got injured, but you can never really tell. The way they were wrapping it up, it looked like a compound fracture, but I hear it was only a sprain.
Utley does get thrown at every game, and it is the Phillies’ pitching staff’s job to do something about it. I am not saying throw at the other team’s best player’s head, but brush someone back every once in a while.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:17 am
Most contact plays at the plate are “ok” in my opinion, with hardly any of them ever being dirty. The dirty slides come at 2nd base where an unprotected second baseman or shortstop is trying to make a play.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:24 am
It was a bad play, but not a dirty one. Once Utley made the mistake of going for it, there’s only one thing to do in that situation. It was a shitty slide, but you don’t just walk into an out under those circumstance.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:26 am
NC-Jason, you stole my comment about being run over.. i know, not original, but please come up with your own trite statements. thanks.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
well i mean they did break chase’s hand during the stretch run last year
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:33 am
Todd I apologize - next time I will include parenthetical citations. Either way the Nats suck
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:33 am
July 26th is the stretch-run??
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:37 am
The Quote on Choking makes no sense. The phils are in second place, the only people who can choke are the Muts
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I loved the gutsiness. I didn’t like that he did that with two runners on, two outs, and the NL’s RBI leader at the plate. Just sayin’.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Howard was primed and ready to strike out anyway.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:29 pm
We all know that Utley plays hard and as someone mentioned, a fair comparison to Pete Rose. Utley may also wanted to fire up the team.
The Phillies unfortunately didn’t gained ground on the Mets (2 games back). This leads me to another topic that I believe Tim Malcolm and other posters here have not mentioned.
When Mets aquired Luis Ayala from the Nats on August 17th, I felt that There is no way Luis Ayala should have cleared waivers past the Phillies, regardless if he is a Philly killer or not. Any single relief pitcher that can improve the Mets should never make it past the Phils as
long as we sit games behind them in the standings.
I don’t pretend to know the art of waiver wire trades - but I am
quite positive that all the Phillies had to do is claim him and then
offer the Nationals next to nothing to either a) keep him in AAA
until Sept 1 or b) have the Nationals pull him back and eliminate his
waiver eligibility. And they didn’t. If Ayala gets ONE out against
the Phils in the upcoming weekend series, then its solely to blame on the front office.
As I type this, the Mets are on a roll as Ayala, their newest
closer, recorded his 5th save (since the trade) last night. Apparently,
Ayala also have given the rest of the bullpen a lift as they combined
to provide seven shutout innings in the 6-5 win in 10 innings over a
good Milwaukee club. The Mets have won 5 of 6 on the current road trip
and 16 out of last 21 for a season best 17 games over .500 (78-61).
This team couldn’t pick a better time to click on all cylinders which
unfortunately for the Phillies is bad news.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
seriously, Chase had to be thinking that with 2 outs and sitting on 3B with Howard up. Howard Ks 40% of the time…. and now that this is all occurring to me right now, I applaud the play by Utley that much more. Why should he stand there and watch him strike out…. again… score a damn run.
NC-Jason… maybe a footnote? either way, we’re cool.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Originally I thought 90 wins would be enough to win the east division
for the Phillies. They are now 76-63 and 2 games behind the red hot
Mets. The team would need to go 14-9 and the Mets 11-12. That is no
longer a likely scenario… not the way the Mets are playing. The
weekend series (3 games) with the Mets at Shea will provide the answer.
It will be the Phillies LAST chance to win a series against them as
they are o for 4 with one split (losing 10 of 15 games).
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
It was a heads up play and thats why Acta isn’t screaming from the roof-tops like Ozzie Guillen would. If it was a dirty play he would have charged the Flores but he didn’t and it was a close play, it’s not like on any club the players spend hours refining the proper technique for stealing home so that the catcher doesn’t get injured.
The Nats press unfortunately seems to still have an inferiority complex…
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I was thinking 16-7 would get the job done. That lets the Mets go 13-10. Is that too tall of an order? Maybe, but our SP has been going pretty well sans Kendrick and the schedule certainly lightens up after Milwaukee. Either way, every game is huge from here on out.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Wait a second. The Nationals have fans?
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Yeah the do have some fans… They drink wine, eat cheese, complain A LOT and still think they have Vlad in right field.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:31 pm
It wasn’t a dirty play thats what you do when your running home and the catcher blocking the plate,if teams and people don’t like it,tell the catcher to not block then.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Chase Utley and his ‘run over the catcher’ mentally is great to fire up a team or get a big run, but the smart baseball thing to do in that situation would be a hard slide at the front of the plate, not a headfirst dive OVER the plate. This has happened numerous times this year and has cost the Phillies runs. Bruntlett slides earlier in the season, is definately going to be safe and the Phils win the game. I’m all for hard nosed players, but only in situations where a slide isn’t going to get you to the plate faster.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:13 pm
LOL @ Howard was going to strike out anyway..That was good! I cant argue that one. There was nothing dirty about the play what-so-ever. Thats what happens when you block the plate. Its how you play the game. Did you see the look on Utley’s face after he took the field, and they took him out in the stretcher? If anyone knows what its like to get injured, it’s Utley! (Flashback to last season against the Nationals). The Nats have no room to talk.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
any fan base of a team that has a “wave your hat” segment in between innings to rile up the crowd would complain about such a hit. those that were a the game monday know what i’m talking about. they haven’t seen anything like utley’s balls out play from their lackluster team.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
A catcher job is to defend homeplate and a base runners job is to score the run. That is the nature of the game. Both players did their job and there was absolutely nothing there but a good, fair, hard baseball play. That is why they play and why we pay to watch the best play. If a catcher doesn’t want to get hit, don’t block the plate and see how long you stay employed (Rod Barajas I guess is exempt). I for one want to see the players I pay to see, compete down to the last out, every game.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I dont get it, Utley saw that Flores had caught the ball before he giot there. Did you want him to get in a rundown or tagged out? What do you do when a catcher has the ball and your running full speed to home? You try to knock the ball out. If he had done that there wouldnt be skepticism of a dirty play. Get your panties out of a bunch and move on. Nothing dirty about trying to get a run on a heads up hustle play like that.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
more players in baseball need to play like chase utley. i just wish he had more fire. sure he plays hard all the time, but where’s the emotion, the fire!?. just one time when he gets hit by a pitch i’d like to see him charge the mound. there’s been times where everybody in the park knew he was beaned purposely and he just puts his head down and walks to first. i want to see some more fire outta him personally. he needs a little more lenny dykstra in him and he’d be the perfect baseball player.
September 7th, 2008 at 10:50 am
This Nats fan’s POV:
Dumb, dumb, breathtakingly dumbass play.
But Manuel said exactly what needed saying.