The Official Site of Chase Utley

Mon, Oct 13th 2008, 09:48

Chase Utley and the California dream

LAKEWOOD, Calif. – There were only a few cars in the lot at the Lakewood Batting Cages when Chase Utley took the field for the first inning of the National League Championship Series on Thursday night in Philadelphia.
In Southern California, a late-afternoon fog was rolling in from the ocean, and the ping of metal bats and the “thwap!” of a pitch hitting the tarp on the backstop drifted from the same chain-link cages where the Phillies second baseman honed his swing as a youngster.

“I used to ride my bike there all the time,” said Utley, who grew up in neighboring Long Beach, as he readied for Game 1 at Citizens Bank Park.

“I started showing up so much they put me to work, just cleaning up and doing little things around there, and they would let me hit for free. I used to spend a lot of time in that place.”

Several times a week from the time he was around 10 until he was 14 or 15, Utley would arrive at the cages and stay for hours.

“I’d load him up with quarters,” said his father, Dave Utley, an attorney who represents injured longshoremen who work at the busy Port of Long Beach. “He’d burn through his quarters and they’d have him go in the cages and pick up stray balls, menial stuff, work behind the counter selling popcorn, and they’d let him hit some more.

“I’d go in and it was like, ‘There’s the dad of the kid we can’t get rid of.’ “

The kid from the cages will be back in Southern California today for Game 3 of the NLCS at Dodger Stadium, about 28 miles northeast of his boyhood home. If there is not a hero’s welcome, it is because he is playing against the Dodgers, and because it is hard for an athlete to stand out in Southern California, an area that produces so many stars. The most famous baseball player from Utley’s high school, Long Beach Polytechnic, is Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn. Billie Jean King went there, too. Tiger Woods grew up in nearby Cerritos and played on Long Beach’s public courses as a boy. Olympic beach volleyball star Misty May-Treanor went to Long Beach State.

As the Phillies fell behind the Dodgers, 2-0, in Game 1, Dominic Gawel, 9, stood in the 40-m.p.h. cage at the Lakewood Batting Cages taking swings as his father, Joe, watched.

Across the street from the modest 20-year-old facility, a jet engine roared as a plane took off from a runway at Long Beach Airport. Maybe now you know why Utley can concentrate at the plate.

Inside, on the wall above the change machine that dispenses batting cage tokens – $1 for 12 pitches – an autographed Utley baseball card is signed, “To Lakewood Cages!” Behind the counter, Kevin Tyler, who owns the cages along with his father, Darrel, and brother, Roy, fiddled with his computer until he found a way to watch the game.

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