Oh, yeah. It would help if he started swinging the bat a little better, too.
Life, like baseball, can throw you curves. Los Angeles hasn't been to the World Series since 1988. And Utley, then just 9 years old and living in Southern California, attended Game 2 against the Oakland A's.
He remembers Orel Hershiser pitching for the Dodgers, although if he remembers that the slender righthander threw a three-hit shutout, he omitted the detail yesterday. "It was a lot of fun," he recalled. "I was young at the time, but I can remember that it was pretty exciting."
Still, when the Dodgers drafted him in the second round out of Long Beach Poly High School in 1997, he turned them down to attend UCLA. "For me, it was about growing as a person and trying to get that college experience," he said. "I'm happy with my decision. I made a bunch of great friends in college and I wouldn't change it for the world.
"That was a long time ago. It was a difficult decision. The money was there. Obviously, playing professional baseball was a dream of mine. At that point in my life I felt it better suited me to go to college and start my education. And if baseball was meant to be after college, then I'd have another opportunity."
Utley is a big reason the Phillies have become the kind of team that routinely contends for a postseason berth. That was true this year even though he fell considerably short of the early hype that installed him as the preseason favorite to be voted the National League's Most Valuable Player, following in the footsteps of Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins and completing the MV3 trifecta.
He got off to a sizzling start but ended up batting just .292, his lowest average since 2005, his first full season in the majors. He hit a career-high 33 homers, but 10 of them came in the first 27 games of the season and 25 in the first half of the season, just eight after the All-Star break.
