Chase Utley had been a major-league ballplayer for just six days when he sat in the manager’s office at Veterans Stadium.
He was not yet “The Man,” the iconic player who captured the spirit of the city as well as almost anyone else. No, he was just a prospect in April of 2003, a former first-round pick who had one plate appearance — a pinch-hit strikeout — over five games with the Phillies.
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Utley had been summoned to the office because he was being sent back to the minor leagues. He stared back at the men in the room as they told him how the move provided a chance to play every day with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons. His time was coming, they said.
Any thoughts?
“I guess you guys don’t want to win,” Utley said.
Utley stood up from his chair, walked out of the office, and drove to Moosic.
For Utley, it was a demotion to triple-A. For the decision-makers who sent him there, it was a glimpse into the player — perhaps the most popular among a generation of Philadelphians — he would soon become.
The next stop in the 43-year-old Utley’s journey could be Cooperstown, N.Y., as he’s two years away from being eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard, Utley’s teammates during the last great Phillies era, fell short last month on their first year on the ballot.
While Rollins will have another chance, having met the threshold to remain on the ballot, Utley’s Hall of Fame case seems to be the strongest among the group that captivated the region.
Utley grew up in Southern California and said he didn’t know anything about Philadelphia, “but it changed my life.” His career was iconic and it started as a 24-year-old in the manager’s office.
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“It was all about what he was,” said Ed Wade, the general manager when the Phillies drafted Utley and the man who had to deliver the news in the office. “It wasn’t just about the talent that he brought to the field, but his leadership qualities off the field and that passion and desire.”
“You want that,” said Larry Bowa, the Phillies manager for Utley’s first two seasons. “You have to like that instead of saying, ‘OK, I guess I’m not good enough.’ Typical Ut.”
Former Phillies general manager Pat Gillick, a 2011 Hall of Fame inductee, told the people who worked for him to treat every player the same, no matter their stature. All of them — from the superstar to the kid in rookie ball — were employees of the same organization.
“But the one thing Pat used to say was, ‘You try to treat everyone fairly, but you’ll probably treat some guys more fairly than others,’” said Ruben Amaro Jr., who was an assistant to Wade and Gillick before becoming the team’s GM.
Utley was one of those players. He was a shortstop at UCLA and there were concerns about his defense when the Phillies drafted him 15th overall in 2000. He sure could hit, but could he play second base? It was the job of Ruben Amaro Sr. and John Vukovich — two of the team’s most dedicated instructors — to find out.
The elder Amaro played six of his 11 major-league seasons with the Phillies, was a Gold Glove shortstop, and spent decades teaching the art of playing the infield. Vukovich was a career .161 hitter but stuck in the big leagues for 10 seasons thanks to a steady glove and fierce attitude.
“You’re talking about older-school guys,” the younger Amaro said. “Vuke was a grinder. Vuke figured out a way to stay in the big leagues and figured out a way to be the best coach he could possibly be. He was a grinder. My dad, the same way. Both of them took a lot of pride in their work ethic as coaches.”
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Utley, despite being paid more in his signing bonus ($1.78 million) than either the elder Amaro or Vukovich made in their careers, was the type of player the seasoned baseball men loved. He fielded their ground balls for hours in Clearwater, Fla., driven to prove he could be a major-league second baseman.
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“I said ‘Dad, tell me about Chase. I know he’s a little unorthodox and not your typical Latin American smooth middle infielder. Tell me whether he’s going to play second base or not,’” the younger Amaro said. “He said, ‘Ruben, you do not worry about Chase Utley. He’s going to be able to play second base because he’s going to make himself a second baseman.’”
Utley’s work ethic — “I got a lot out of my ability,” he said — became iconic. And it is what made him one of the players people like Vukovich and Amaro may have tended to treat “more fairly than others.” They saw themselves in a player — ”a baseball rat,” Bowa said — trying to climb his way to Philadelphia.
“It’s easy for a guy like Chase Utley to become a ‘coach’s pet’ or ‘coach’s favorite’ because you know that his ultimate goal is to try and maximize his ability and work on his craft and help his team win,” the younger Amaro said. “Whenever you have a guy like that, shoot, you’re going to naturally spend the time.”
Utley started the 2002 season at triple A after bypassing double A. He had a new position: third base. The ground ball Utley fielded at third that spring was the first time he ever played there. The results showed. He made 13 errors at third through the first 38 games of the triple-A season.
Amaro called his father to ask him if he still thought the player he was so eager to trust had the ability to play third. Again, Amaro’s dad expressed confidence.
“It wasn’t necessarily a discussion about his ability as it was, ‘He will find a way because of the way he goes about his business and his work ethic and his competitiveness. He’s going to figure it out,’” Amaro said. “It didn’t matter where we put him. I think he just wanted to be in the big leagues. I think he just wanted to win and wanted to figure out how he could best maximize his own ability.”
He was right. Utley made 15 errors in the next 85 games, committing just five in his final 43 games. Utley reached the majors the next season and played nearly 13,000 innings in the field for the Phillies, none of which came at third base. But if that’s where they wanted him, he was ready to prove he could do it.
Utley never won a Gold Glove at second base, but he graded analytically as one of the better second basemen during his career. He overcame any shortcomings by relying on his instincts, which were never more evident than his iconic play in Game 5 of the 2008 World Series.
His momentum carrying him toward second base after fielding a grounder, Utley feinted a throw across his body to first and fired home for the final out of the inning. His pump fake baited the Tampa Bay Rays’ Jason Bartlett and the Phillies were six outs away from being world champions.
It had been years since he first worked with Vukovich and Amaro, but the roots of that play were dug in the infield dirt in Clearwater, Fla. The iconic play — “The Utley Throw” — may not have happened without the help of those two dedicated teachers.
“A lot of people don’t realize how much time it takes,” Bowa said. “It’s a two-way street. Vuke was relentless and, ‘Let’s go.’ Ut said, ‘Let’s go.’ After a while, you became a pretty good player and you could say, ‘Not today, not today.’ It wasn’t like that.”
“He worked. The way that he worked, it wouldn’t be allowed now because of workloads. That’s big now in all of baseball, but this guy went out every single day. Ground ball, ground ball, ground ball, double play, double play. He was relentless. It was almost like, ‘I’ll show everyone that I can play this position.’”
Paul Scott was a part-time scout for seven seasons before being hired to a full-time position ahead of the 2000 draft. The Phillies had the 15th pick and Mike Arbuckle — the scouting director who led the drafts that found the key players of the 2008 champs — heavily scouted Utley all season at UCLA.
Two weeks before the draft, UCLA played an NCAA regional in Oklahoma City, which fell under Scott’s scouting area. It was his first time seeing Utley and it would be his job to write the team’s final report on Utley before draft day.
Live, athletic body. Long arms, small waist. Quiet, but aggressive. Quick bat. Sneaky power. Good, soft hands. Good instincts and good base runner. Active, moves around a lot. Can drive the ball the other way. Hitch in swing, but hands and bat are in good position at trigger. He will be a starting second baseman on a pennant winner. Top of the order hitter. Should move through the system quickly.
Utley went 7-for-15 with five extra-base hits in the three games Scott watched and was the regional’s MVP as UCLA advanced. It was easy to see the talent, but it wasn’t just Utley’s stat line that allowed Scott to precisely peg Utley as the “starting second baseman on a pennant winner,” which he became years later.
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“You knew he was a ballplayer and you knew he was hard-nosed,” said Scott, now an amateur scout with the Reds. “The Phillies, what they loved about him, is that he was [cutthroat] on the field. Competitive and wanted to beat you at everything. Throw that on top of the talent and you have a special player.
“When I’m talking to kids and talking about players now, I still use him as an example of how he played the game.”
Those intangibles are hard to quantify, but they are important to Utley’s case for the Hall of Fame, for which he becomes eligible in 2024.
“I understand analytics,” Wade said. “I was a PR guy and did salary arbitration cases and I understand the statistical aspect of the game. But you can’t walk past the intangibles, the character and the makeup. Mike Arbuckle and the scouting staff, those guys knew what they were looking for aside from the tools.
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Chase was surrounded by MVPs … but over the span of time I think the most valuable player on that club was Chase.
“Chase was surrounded by MVPs. He had an MVP at first base in Ryan Howard and an MVP at shortstop in Jimmy Rollins, but over the span of time I think the most valuable player on that club was Chase. Because not only of what he brought on the field on both sides of the ball, but what he brought in the clubhouse and the standard he set for his teammates.”
It’s hard to measure those traits, but Utley’s value is tangible. Among the 20 second baseman in the Hall of Fame, Utley’s career 64.5 Wins Above Replacement per Baseball Reference would rank 10th between Craig Biggio and Jackie Robinson. His career OPS (.823) would place him eighth and his 259 homers would rank fifth.
Is Utley thinking about his Hall of Fame chances?
“Honestly, not yet,” he said. “I would imagine once the conversation starts, I’ll put a little more thought into it. At this point, I have not. I enjoyed my time playing in the major leagues and felt like I got a lot out of my ability. I feel extremely fortunate to play on the teams that I did with good coaching staffs and upper management that I was lucky enough to play for.”
His case becomes even stronger when you focus on Utley’s 10-year span from 2004 to 2013 when he finished second among all position players with 55.4 WAR as calculated by FanGraphs, trailing only Albert Pujols.
According to data analysis by Michael Stubel, a diehard Philly sports fan with a passion for baseball history, only two position players in baseball history who are eligible for the Hall of Fame — Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, both tied to performance-enhancing drugs — have yet to reach Cooperstown after finishing first or second in WAR over a 10-year span.
“This kid was not going to be denied,” Bowa said. “He could deal with constructive criticism. He could deal with extra work. He could deal with whatever you gave him. There was never a time when he said, ‘Ah, man. I don’t want to go out there.’ You could hit him 50 ground balls in the morning, play a game, and then say, ‘Oh, by the way, we have 50 more after this game.’ He’d be out there. That was just his mindset and what made him a great player.”
Wade, knowing how the Phillies built their 1980 championship team, believed that the best way to find success in the majors was to first do it in the minors. His front office had a mantra: We want to get good and stay good.
So the Phillies focused on player development, using the draft to select most of the key players of the 2008 team. And it was that mantra — get good and stay good — that Wade clung to when Oakland’s Billy Beane called him after the 2004 season.
The A’s were shopping Barry Zito, who two years earlier had won the American League’s Cy Young. He was one of baseball’s premier starters and Beane thought the Phillies — a team desperate to reach October — would be willing to meet his demands. It would take Utley, relief pitcher Ryan Madson, and outfielder Michael Bourn, all still prospects who had combined for just 190 major-league games.
But making that deal went against everything Wade had preached.
“I certainly listened,” Wade said. “Barry Zito was Barry Zito, but the reality is that we never got close to it. We were trying to rebuild a system that could be sustainable over a number of years. To take core elements of that club and move it for albeit an outstanding major-league pitcher, just didn’t fit the profile of what we were trying to do at that point in time.”
“It probably would have been exciting for some people to see us get a pitcher of Barry Zito’s quality, but now fast-forward to what the ramifications would have been had we done something like that.”
General managers are often judged by the trades they make, but it is the one declined by Wade — who was fired three years before Utley’s famous World Series celebration speech — that allowed Utley to become an icon in Philadelphia instead of Oakland.
“I for one, being the aggressive GM that I was, I was probably pushing for him to trade to get those next pieces,” the younger Amaro said. “But to his credit, he made the right decisions on those guys and it paid off. We have one of the most iconic players, as far as the fans are concerned, in the game. He may not get the same number of MVP votes that a guy like Jimmy Rollins would get, but I’ll tell you what, nobody sold more jerseys than Chase Utley.”
Utley did not hide his frustration that night in the manager’s office. The previous summer, the plan was for Utley to start 2003 at third base following Scott Rolen’s departure. Then the Phillies signed David Bell and retained second baseman, Placido Polanco. There was nowhere for him to play.
Utley thought he should have been in the majors two years earlier. Now, less than a week into the season where he was finally getting a chance, Utley was shipped out. It was easy to understand his anger.
The Phillies gave him three days off before he had to report to triple-A. Perhaps it would be good for him to clear his head. Utley was in Moosic the next morning, an icon waiting to be born.
“I loved it,” the younger Amaro said. “With some guys, you might take that the wrong way and say, ‘OK, pal. Your mirror isn’t working too well and your self-assessment isn’t great.’ But you treat some guys more fairly than others. When a guy like Chase Utley says it, you love it. ‘OK, he’s going to show us.’ A cool moment.”
“When you get players like that, they don’t happen very often,” Bowa said. “So when you get one, you cherish the moment.”
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