Photos: 2008 Phillies
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
One night after Kirk Gibson created highlight history forever in the first game of the 1988 World Series, nine-year-old Utley and his father sat in the second level at Dodgers Stadium and watched Orel Hershiser pitch a complete game shutout that gave the Dodgers a stranglehold on their sixth championship.
Many pages have fallen off the calendar since then and the Dodgers haven't found their way back to the World Series. Last night, in a bit of a turnaround that Chase Utley couldn't have imagined in 1988, he threw another bat into their path.
Utley hit a two-run home run in the sixth inning off a previously untouchable Derek Lowe last night, just two batters before Pat Burrell's solo homer provided the margin in an excruciatingly tense opening game of the National League Championship Series. The final score was 3-2, but before Utley came to the plate in the sixth, it seemed that he and the Phillies were destined to watch another Dodgers pitcher throw a shutout.
Lowe had been great to that point. He had gotten all but one of the outs either on ground balls or strikeouts as he employed a sinking fastball and a very sharp slider. But when Los Angeles shortstop Rafael Furcal began the bottom of the sixth with a two-base error on a grounder by Shane Victorino, Lowe left a sinker out over the plate and Utley turned on it and sent it into the right-field stands.
"He was able to pull the ball. He got out in front of it," manager Charlie Manuel said.
Just that quickly, a game the Phillies couldn't seem to grasp was falling into their hands. When Burrell also got a fastball he could drive and put the Phils ahead, Dodgers manager Joe Torre was out of the dugout and Lowe was out of the game. Just that fast, just minutes after Lowe had seemed indomitable.
Maybe it wasn't exactly like Gibson in 1988, maybe Utley didn't limp haltingly toward the plate, but there was a concern about his physical status coming into this series.
Bothered by a sore left hip for much of the second half of the season, Utley was just 2 for 15 in the division series against Milwaukee. His regular-season numbers presaged the trouble he has experienced recently. He had 23 home runs and 65 runs batted in before July 1 and 10 homers and 39 RBIs after it.
"I think when Chase Utley's hip is bothering him enough where he can't play, he's going to walk in and tell me," Manuel said earlier this week. "He ain't nowhere near there yet."
Apparently not. At least not last night.
"It's all about trying to put some hits together," Utley said last night. "We had a runner in scoring position and I was just trying to get him over. No matter what, I was trying to get him to third base. I squared up a sinker and it went over the fence. For Derek Lowe, it was up, but it wasn't a bad pitch."
Typically, Utley allowed that his hit merely got the Phils back into the game, but the big hit of the night was the home run by Burrell. Also typically, he didn't say much about whether he has been bothered by his hip, although the recent numbers have spoken loudly.
"I think it was just a matter of time until he got it going, until he found it," Manuel said last night. "He hadn't really stayed strong on his back side and gotten through the ball like he does a lot. But it's still there. He proved that tonight. He always comes up with a big hit and drives the ball at the right time. It hasn't gone anywhere. He's still got it."
The Dodgers' organization thought he had that kind of special talent when they took him in the second round out of high school in the 1997 amateur draft. He opted to attend UCLA instead and finally signed his first professional contract with the Phillies.
"It was a difficult decision, because playing professional ball was a dream of mine," Utley said before the series began, "but I wanted to start my education and if baseball was meant to be, then I'd get another opportunity."
He was right about that part and the Phillies wildly support his decision. Last night, as the team he rooted for as a boy, the team that wanted to sign him, tried to take a first step toward another World Series, Chase Utley got in the way.
Hurting or not - and he won't say - he will attempt to do the same thing tonight.
at 215-854-5842
Read his recent work
at http://go.philly.com/bobford.
|
|
|
|
|
|
REGIONAL SCOREBOARD
Latest Sports Blogs
TOP STORIES
Green
email this
print this
reprint or license this
Buy tickets online
