Sam Donnellon: In Phillies debut, Brown brings sounds of September
THE CAN'T-MISS kid reached second in five strides. That's how Domonic Brown's first major league at-bat will get recounted to my grandkids anyway. Three strides to first, two to second, and then a slide that must have covered, oh, 20 yards.
THE CAN'T-MISS kid reached second in five strides. That's how Domonic Brown's first major league at-bat will get recounted to my grandkids anyway. Three strides to first, two to second, and then a slide that must have covered, oh, 20 yards.
Did you see him hit his feet instantly?
Did you see him pound his hands together like Pete Rose used to?
Did you hear the sound of the bat? Did you see how hard that ball hit the wall, or the extra gear he hit on the basepaths? Two hits, two runs batted in, two runs scored, a chance to show all five tools in the Phillies' 7-1 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks last night.
"Ah, man," the kid said. "A great day.
"One of the best days of my life."
He said this before the game, before the ovations and the wall-banging drive. He said this because his parents were rushing up from Georgia to be there, because his girlfriend was with him, because everything he worked for, everything he imagined over the course of a dream that started when he was 7 years old was about to play out in front of him.
It's the stuffing of baseball, these stories. It's what makes it as much of a cult as it is a sport. Did The Babe really call his shot? Could Ted Williams really read the lettering on the baseball?
Was that blood on Curt Schilling's sock, or Heinz?
Brown arrived in the clubhouse about 4 p.m., dressing at an unmarked locker between those of Greg Dobbs and Raul Ibanez, within a wisecrack of the ones used by Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, with whom he is close.
Howard was him once, had the big call-up, went down, came back up, won rookie of the year.
He's offering advice. Brown, who says Howard "was like my big brother," is absorbing.
"I tell him not to worry about it," Howard said. "All it is, is just going out there and fulfilling your expectations of yourself. And just doing your thing and not worrying about anything else.
"I remember I got my first hit, a pinch-hit, against Jaret Wright. And I remember I was in the on-deck circle and I was kind of nervous.
"But then when they announced my name and I heard the crowd kind of erupt - that's when I was like, 'All right, I'm here.' "
That's what the double clap at second said, too. Brown said beforehand that he gets nervous before all games, and afterward confessed to feeling it even more as he walked from the dugout to the on-deck circle. When he caught a routine fly ball in the first inning, the 45,048 acknowledged it with disproportionate applause, as if he had just cinched a playoff spot. Then came the standing ovation that greeted his first at-bat, and when he lasered the third pitch he saw from Edwin Jackson off the middle of the rightfield wall in the second inning, the place reached mid-September decibels.
"Once I got in that batter's box I just kind of blanked out, focused on trying to get that runner in from scoring position," he said. "I could hear them, but it sounded so far away."
As far away as it must have seemed 24 hours before, when Brown was patrolling rightfield for Lehigh Valley, and Shane Victorino was about to dive himself right onto the disabled list. Brown learned about Victorino's fateful dive from a fan in the rightfield stands at Lehigh Valley, one of the nice perks of playing up the turnpike from the big club.
"I said, 'What's going on?' " the kid recalled. "He said, 'You might be getting called up.' "
It's the magic of the minors, this rapport, adopting a player and then sharing in his excitement when he leaves. It's the magic of being new, too. He may not play today against a scheduled lefthander, and then again, after last night, he just might. He dived for a ball in the ninth inning that he should not have, and it probably cost Roy Halladay a shutout. But his honeymoon has officially begun here, and for a while at least, each at-bat, each routine catch, will sound as if Cooperstown is as inevitable as the hype.
"I think he's got a bobblehead coming out tomorrow," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel joked afterward.
"I suggested it."
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