When my girlfriend bought me a Chase Utley jersey, I was ecstatic. You see, it was for my birthday the season just after the Phillies had won the World Series. I wore it all around the enemy territory of New York City where I live, and I appreciated the respect I got for it. People were patting me on the back telling me what a great player Utley is, and my response was a highly confident prediction that he would go down as one of the best hitters in history and make the Hall of Fame. While Utley remains one of my favorite Phillies of all time, he may not retire in league with the game’s greatest of all time.
After a great start to his career, lately Chase has been overcome by something far more imposing than any of the many major league pitchers he’s taken deep with ease. A plague of injuries have haunted Utley over the past couple years, holding up his at bats and severely impacting his production. He broke a bone in his hand, had hip surgery, and most recently, has been plagued by chronic knee pain. It’s a shame, I thought initially, until I got to thinking about the struggles we all face in life that we must push through to make a difference and to be remembered.
The worst enemy of Chase Utley, like many modern day athletes who have enjoyed some degree of success at the professional level, is not his nagging knee pain, which now has some scientific description to make it even more terrifying to Phillies fans who just cannot believe their luck. It’s not tendinitis that’s haunting Chase; it’s the success that he has already achieved. He’s won the World Series, made the All-Star team several times, and he has been a serious candidate for the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award. He’s managed some amazing production and is one of the best second basemen of all time by some measures. But will his final numbers indicate that? It all depends on what Chase wants, and what price he’s willing to pay.
The slugging second baseman’s bad break sucks two times as bad for the Phillies. That’s because just when we solidified our pitching staff to maximize the opportunity of a special lineup, Utley is joined on the bench by Ryan Howard, who was felled by a freak achilles tendon tear on the last pitch of last season.
You know what, though, it’s not about luck. Everybody deals with their share of hard knocks in life. It’s about how we deal with those pitfalls and stumbles that define us. Henry Ford II is attributed for saying, “Never complain, never explain,” but somehow I feel like it better fits some war beaten general who made it through his own personal bloodbath, or perhaps a hall of fame sportsman. Philly’s own fictional hero, Rocky Balboa, said, “…it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!”
Remember when Jack Youngblood played through a broken leg? Try to get one of today’s high paid heroes to do that! Except for a handful of guys who still round the bases with a special fire in their heart, you’ll have some trouble. The game has changed since Kirk Gibson’s legendary slam, which was accompanied by a hobbled slug around the base path.
You know who does play through pain today? Chipper Jones, the weather beaten ball player most fantasy owners stay away from because of his propensity for injury; he does. He’s the guy some beer guzzling lug takes a chance on every spring fantasy draft, and gets rewarded with a ton of production at a cheap price. That’s because Chipper plays through pain, and he’ll probably make it into the Hall of Fame because of it. Imagine if Chipper started talking about retirement the first time he got seriously hurt. Think of how many fewer RBIs he would have had in his career and how less competitive the Braves would have been without him over the years.
Heck, if you or I stopped working toward success at the first stumbling block, where would we be today? Thank the Lord for necessity, because it overrules what is plaguing today’s modern professional athletes. They do not have the incentive of an overdue electric bill to pull them back onto the field of life.
Look, don’t get me wrong; there are some injuries you just can’t play through, and there are other injuries it’s not smart to play through if you ever want to recover. Still, today’s ballplayers need to tell their trainer to take a break every once in awhile and get back to work. I hear you though; who can know what Chase is dealing with, because we cannot feel what he feels? And if it were September, you and I both know Chase Utley would be playing.
Yet, we also know that guys who play for free tend to play through pain more often than the guys who are making millions. It’s because we play for the game, that one particular game we happen to be involved in. It seems so important because it is, because we won’t always be able to play in that game and we know it, so we play to win and we play through pain. We play for the respect we earn every single game because it’s fleeting. We don’t have records to look back on or statistics to ride on, or money to spend or trophies to shine. We only have the moments and the memories.
You know, the problem is bigger than baseball. Our society is getting soft. There I said it! History shows that societal decadence signals the end of a civilization. It happened in ancient Athens before the end, and maybe it’s happening here now. I’m not going to lay down the evidence, but I think it’s evident enough for you to fill in. We are not as tough as we once were, given the things we do and how we live in the USA today.
I’m not saying Howard can play through an achilles tear, but there are some injuries that hall of famers play through. For instance, “chronic knee” pain is something somebody who wants to help his team win the World Series plays through instead of watching his team struggle. That’s probably why Utley is fielding ground balls today, because the Phillies are sitting in last place in the N.L. East with him off the field.
These types of injuries are the kind guys remembered as winners played through. And yet, so often today, the same injuries are not the kind ballplayers play through. That’s what bothers me most. That said, I see Utley taking ground balls, and I have a feeling he’s not pain free. I have a feeling he is noticing the necessity of his getting back into the lineup, to give the Phillies back some of their fire. In fact, I think Chase has been thinking about the context of this article even before it was ever written, because he is tough and he is a winner. Chase will lead this team out of its rut if he has to, because his will is stronger than his pain. With regard to the Hall of Fame, the only question is how badly Utley wants it, not whether his body will make easy or not. The same goes for you and I in this hard knock life; all we can do is struggle until the end. That way, maybe, we’ll be remembered by someone for something. More importantly, though, we’ll always know in our own hearts that we were men and we earned that title.
