Utley should learn to lean

I don't know how much baseball history Chase Utley has absorbed, but he probably ought to soak up a little on Pete Reiser.

The sad story of that long-ago Dodgers outfielder ought to be a cautionary tale for the Phillies' hard-headed second-baseman.

It's a simple lesson really: Brick walls and 90-m.p.h. fastballs respect neither talent nor guts.

Fifty-seven years after he ended a once-starry career as a .136-hitting backup outfielder for the Cleveland Indians, Reiser's name endures. That's because he turned out to be something Utley himself often seems destined to become:

A martyr to his own stubbornness.

Like Utley, Reiser was a budding superstar. Leo Durocher, who managed him with Brooklyn in the 1940s, later would say that the only player he ever saw whose skills were comparable to Reiser's was Willie Mays.

"And [Pete] had more power than Willie – lefthanded and righthanded both," Durocher said.

For the pennant-winning Dodgers in 1941, Reiser, 22, hit .343 with 39 doubles, 17 triples and 14 homers. Like Utley, he played with a headlong, headstrong drive, a drive that ultimately destroyed him.

Reiser couldn't - or wouldn't - stop banging into outfield walls, unpadded outfield walls. Even when managers beseeched him to back off, he kept barreling into the bricks.

One collision fractured his skull. Another left him temporarily paralyzed. A third hurt him so severely that last rites were administered - at the ballpark.

Eventually, the injuries sapped his skills, severely truncating what could have been a Hall of Fame career. At 33, he was done.

As a second baseman, Utley doesn't need to worry about many walls. His problem is the pitches he refuses to dodge. While they frequently have hurt Utley, they have the potential to kill the Phillies.

The three-time all-star, an absolutely essential cog in this franchise's future, continues to sacrifice his body for no good reason. He stands on top of the plate and won't budge. He knows most pitchers try to get him out in there. If he backed off too regularly, they'd try to get him out away.

But when a rock-hard sphere is hurtling toward you at body-warping speed, there's no shame in spinning out of the way. Standing there like a statue might seem like a nod to baseball's macho code. In reality, it's more likely career suicide.

How long will it be before a pitch breaks another bone, forces another surgery, ruins another season?