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Wed, Oct 8th 2008, 12:15
Utley faces team he loved as a kid
Imagine how tempting this offer must have sounded to an 18-year-old kid from Southern California, fresh out of high school.
Come start your professional baseball career now. Someday, you can play for the Dodgers, the same team you cheered for while growing up.
hat’s the offer Phillies second baseman Chase Utley had to turn down when the Dodgers picked him in the second round of the 1997 First-Year Player Draft. Instead, Utley chose to attend UCLA and hoped that an opportunity to play professional ball came along again.
It did, and now Utley’s baseball life is coming full circle as his Phillies prepare to take on his former favorite team, the Dodgers, in the National League Championship Series.
“It was a difficult decision,” Utley said Tuesday. “Obviously, playing professional baseball was a dream of mine.”
Utley was two months shy of his 10th birthday when his father took him to Game 2 of the 1988 World Series at Dodger Stadium. The two sat right along the rail in the park’s second level to watch Orel Hershiser shut down the Athletics for a 6-0 Dodgers victory.
“They had a good team back then in the late ’80s,” Utley said. “They were exciting to watch.”
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