Chase Utley expects retaliation from the Mets
The big headline coming into Friday night's Mets-Dodgers game is the first Major League start of Dodgers teenage phenom Julio Urias. There's no question about that.
A less obvious drama concerns Chase Utley and a baseball in the back.
Eight months have passed since Utley slid in late and high, undercutting Ruben Tejada and breaking the Mets second baseman's leg in Game 2 of the NL Division series. Tejada is no longer a Met, but Utley figures that won't matter for much when he gets to the plate at Citi Field this weekend.
Utley called the reprisal and ugliness waiting for him in New York "part of the deal" of playing the game. He doesn't expect any niceness, and said that if he could go back, he wouldn't have come into the bag how he did.
"Looking back on it, knowing that [Tejada] was going to spin, he wasn't going to get off his feet, I would have done things differently, knowing that he was going to get hurt," Utley told the Los Angeles Times' Andy McCullough. "But I can't take that back. So I imagine the fans will let me have it."
If Twitter's any indication, fans are hoping for Utley to be human target practice this weekend.
@Jeff_LJ_Lloyd Man I hope Dykstra runs onto the field and attacks Utley #epic
— Abe Southfield (@abeinsouthfield) May 26, 2016
This, of course, is dumb and wrong—as dumb and wrong as the slide that started all of this. No matter how many hot coals the Mets throw Utley's way, he's not changing his style. The 37-year-old ballplayer says he's been asked to play less physically and conserve energy, but doesn't plan on acquiescing to those types of demands.
"I under the concept behind it," Utley said. "It's just something that I've never done. I don't feel for me, personally, it's the right thing to do."
Dan is on Twitter. A slide for a slide leaves the whole world legless.
