Charlie Manuel Defends Chase Utley Because He Has a Spine Unlike Don Mattingly
UPDATE: In yet more spinelessness from Don Mattingly, Chase Utley is not in the starting lineup tonight.
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Here’s what Kyle wrote yesterday:
Chase stole a win last night, and his manager, Don Mattingly, whose job Chase may very well have saved, was too much of a pussy to defend Utley after the game. “Charlie wouldn’t have done that to Chase,” my wife said to me this morning. Absolutely. Charlie would not have only defended Uts, but he would’ve swilled beer with him afterward and asked if he could hear the bone snapping. Chase would’ve nodded.
Indeed.
Uncle Cholly is back, and he’s here to defend one of his gamers. Charlie Manuel made an appearance on MLB Network radio to talk Chase Utley’s slide – because it’s the only topic of conversation now – and he said Chase slid hard, and late, but he didn’t have any ill will. It’s just how he plays.
Note: Charlie Manuel pronounces Washington as “Warshington” and that will be notable later in the post.
“That’s the way he plays. The first time I ever seen him was in Rochester playing triple-A baseball, that’s the first game I’ve even seen him and he hit a catcher, and the catcher was big, and he threw Chase up in the air about three or four feet over his back, and he landed and it hurt him. And I said to him after the game I said “way to go” and he looked at me and he said “I don’t know, Charlie.”
And in Utley’s career, Utley’s been hit a lot at second. He’s also a guy when he catches a ball, he stays there … he stays in too long sometimes. And I seen times like Lasting Milledge in Warshington one night spiked him real high, basically just jumped up on his knee, and he slid high and he cut him, and they were showing a replay of it and they had a recording in Warshington’s clubhouse at the time, and Milledge is sitting there bragging about doing it, saying he meant to do it …
And then in Cincinnati he got cut (physically), and he would never tell me. He wouldn’t even say something to a trainer unless another player, Jimmy Rollins or somebody, would say something to him. And that’s who he is …
I knew he did not slide to hurt Tejada, but he had the intention to take him out on the double play. He slid late, but he definitely did not mean to hurt him in no way.”
Audio here.” target=”_blank”>here.
Hard slides were kind of Milledge’s thing. The slide Cholly was likely remembering was more of a take-out than a cleating, and was likely this one here (via Gnats Nation, who stressed that Milledge got a standing ovation for it):
And the bragging about it? Well … maybe. The Washington Examiner had Milledge quoted as saying this:
“You’ve got to go hard anyway. Any second baseman when I’m breaking up a double play I’m going in hard so I’m not thinking about Utley. But it was good we broke up that double play because it was a key run.”
A brag? Maybe. Repentant? Not even close. Then again, since these slides were Milledge’s jam, this might not even be the one Cholly is talking about. But either way, him bringing up a slide that Nats fans were psyched about back in lowly 2008 (for them) is interesting, since he’s currently talking about how he wants to work for them.
Manuel has gone on the record as saying he’d be interested in the vacant managerial job with the Nationals. “I’m not the kind of guy who will pick up the phone and look for a job,” he told the Washington Times. “But I would definitely be interested in that job.” And that’s where “Warshington” comes in. The West Virginia native might say the city’s name weirdly to us, but it’s what would make him fit right in. As John Kelly said in the Washington Post:
“‘Warsh’ is the predominant characteristic of what linguists call America’s midland accent. The accent can be found in the swath of the country that extends west from Washington, taking in Maryland; southern Pennsylvania; West Virginia; parts of Virginia; southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; most of Missouri; and Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, much of Kansas and west Texas.”
Would his style work there? Don’t know. Are the Nats even interested? No idea. But he’d be among his people. It’d be hard to watch though.