NEW YORK – And on the 37th day, he rested. The Chase was off.
As punishment for his flagrant failure to get a base hit in that 36th straight game Friday night, Chase Utley was summarily benched yesterday, ordered out of the Philadelphia Phillies lineup in the immediate aftermath of his first hitless game since June 21. Ever the gracious hosts, New York fans booed his approach to the plate as a pinch hitter in the ninth inning of a Mets victory.
He surely will be booed vigorously upon his return to the City of Brotherly Loathe, derided either as a laggard at the plate or a slacker for taking a day off for only the second time this season, or both. Philly doesn't always need even one reason, let alone a good one, to boo its own boys.
But, I mean, c'mon. Utley came so, so close to Joe DiMaggio's revered and still unassailable record. All the Phils second baseman needed was a base hit every day for three more weeks.
“Twenty-one short,” said Utley, doing the math before yesterday's game against the New York Mets at sun-stroked Shea Stadium. “Fifty-six straight? Preposterous. Completely preposterous.”
Thank you.
With all due respect to young Mr. Utley – who is precisely the kind of ballplayer and goodfellow that you'd love to see get a hit every game of his life, a deft lefty swinger whose style is not wholly un-Gwynn-like – he still wasn't even in the same area code as Joltin' Joe. He needed more than a week of knocks to break Pete Rose's league record of 44 straight.
As it turned out, Utley didn't even manage to extend the longest streak by a Phillies hitter this season. His double-play partner, shortstop Jimmy Rollins, had all winter to think about his own pursuit of DiMaggio and had it snapped at 38 in April.
“Jimmy and I took entirely different approaches to it,” said Utley, finally allowing himself to talk about The Chase after declining to discuss the subject while it was still in progress. “Jimmy had a bunch of fun with it. He loved talking about it, day after day after day, and it was cool.
“I guess I'm more superstitious than him. My streak was up to something like 20 in July and I already had people asking me all about it. I started pretending like I didn't know what they were talking about. I'm sorry, but I don't understand. After awhile, it got to be a joke, me not talking about it. So I just stuck with it.”
And kept getting hits. Twenty-three times in those 35 games, Utley rapped out two or more hits, batting .425 for July. Teammates naturally would ride and chide him, but he just smiled and kept an even disposition, acting like he'd never heard of this DiMaggio dude.
“I know how those things mess with your head,” said closer Tom Gordon. “My longest streak was 54 saves in a row (in 1999). After about the 35th one, I started thinking about it. Like, what is going on here? What am I doing? Is this really happening?
“Now all I think is, how amazing that (Eric) Gagne was. What did he have, something like 80 straight saves? Amazing.”
Eighty-four, for the record.
As it happens, Gordon is keeping alive a streak of sorts, a remarkable one that it involves the Phillies' win-loss record. Even with their dreadful first half, the Phillies are the only club in the National League not to have lost a game they led after eight innings. They're 46-0 in such games.
And there's the irony. When people started taking notice of Utley's daily hit count, they invariably said something about it being the only thing the Phillies had to celebrate, playing as he did for the most dismal, nonharmonious and uninspired franchise in either league before the All-Star break.
“He brought out the excitement,” said the Phils' celebrated rookie pitcher, Cole Hamels, a product of Rancho Bernardo High. “Every game we played, we had something to look forward to. I think it pulled everybody together.”
“I won't say that's what turned us around or anything like that, but the guys did get fired up about it,” said Utley. “It's a good feeling to know they got behind me the way they did.”
Since then, the Phillies have been the team they were supposed to be all along, winning 12 of 20 before yesterday's loss. Philadelphia's not going to make up the double-digit deficit to the Mets, but the Phils have climbed into the thick of the wild-card race.
Utley ran out of answers, however, when asked how the Phillies could appear to be so improved after General Manager Pat Gillick's drastic housecleaning over the past week. They gave away talent like Bobby Abreu, Cory Lidle, David Bell and Rheal Cormier.
Essentially, they got nothing in return.
Except they got better.
Before coming to first-place New York and winning the opener, the revamped Phillies pounded 45 hits and scored 29 runs in a three-game sweep at division-leading St. Louis. They're even getting a gem or two from their starting rotation.
“It's been tough to have so many people change at once, but I think it relieved the pressure on us a little,” said Hamels, who's struck out 31 batters in his last three starts. “There were all these expectations. When people leave, expectations are lowered. These guys all want to win.”
None more than Utley, who tried his best to make it happen yesterday, coming off the bench with the tying run on first to rocket a single into right. A thing of beauty.
One.
Chris Jenkins: (619) 293-1267;
chris.jenkins@uniontrib.com
