NEW YORK - Pat Gillick stood in the Philadelphia Phillies dugout here Thursday night and drew a blank.
Chase Utley? Incomparable.
Not a left-handed Paul Molitor, because Molitor had what Gillick called a "no-load" swing. Bat steady. No movement.
Utley's swing is a compelling topic of conversation for baseball people. It deserves serious contemplation, as do all things of beauty.
"Al Oliver is a guy who comes to my mind," Gillick, the Phillies senior adviser said, searching for a comparison to the second baseman whose two home runs against the New York Yankees ace lefty CC Sabathia in Game 1 of the World Series Wednesday sent a shiver through the Bronx.
"But know what? Let's go find Charlie. If anybody will know, it's him."
Baseball coaches do not set off the B.S. radar the way football assistants do, but anybody who sells themselves as a "guru" is sometimes exercising a not too subtle amount of "branding." Yet the Charlie of whom Gillick spoke -- Phillies manager Charlie Manuel -- was not cut from that cloth when he was a highly respected hitting coach. He is plain spoken, yet expansive.
Manuel's answers are surprising: Billy Williams, Ernie Banks or maybe Frank Robinson. Baseball Hall of Famers. "Wiry guys," Manuel said.
"Chase has a low-maintenance swing," he said. "He holds his bat at shoulder level -- right off his shoulders -- and kind of takes it back. That's his 'load.' That's his 'trigger.'
"When he pulls the ball and hit the home runs he hit (Wednesday), he catches the ball out front. He did not stay inside the ball. He hit the whole ball and went through it. He has a very good weight shift and he stays strong on his back side and hits against his front side and extends his arms."
Manuel had considerable success as a hitting coach with the Cleveland Indians, so it's not surprising the team he manages has the closest thing you'll find in the National League to an American League lineup.
They wear down opposing players and scored 45 percent of their runs during the regular season by homers -- the most in the major leagues.
The Yankees, by comparison, were fourth at 41 percent.
Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano hit 25 homers. Utley hit 31 and drove in 93 runs. And Manuel suggests he's capable of more.
"Chase has been a guy who always has some kind of run in the middle of the year where you just can't get him out," the Phillies manager said. "I'm talking about over 150 at-bats. He didn't really have one this year. I think he's a .300 hitter. That's what he should be. He hit .282. So, maybe he's picked the Series to have one of those streaks."
Utley has reached base in 27 consecutive postseason games, a major-league record. He's hitting .300 in the playoffs heading into Game 3 Saturday night in Philadelphia -- but he'd hit just one home run and had two runs batted in through the first two playoff series. This has raised suspicions that he is hurt.
Utley hit just .167 in last year's World Series, with two homers and four RBIs. Last November, he underwent hip surgery.
The Phillies deny anything's at work here. But Manuel nodded yesterday when Gillick said: "People make a lot about the long layoff (six days) we had before the World Series, but, I don't know ... I think Chase was probably better served by it than anybody else on our team."
The Phillies are an odd group to be around in the postseason. Teams that are repeat playoff competitors take usually develop their own set of sensibilities in the spotlight of the playoffs.
The Atlanta Braves were always models of professionalism and courtesy; the Yankees have always been corporate and guarded; the Boston Red Sox were a crazy quilt of characters that eventually came to enjoy the postseason media spotlight.
The Phillies, by contrast, give off a bland, yet sour vibe.
Utley, in particular, is strangely aloof. He shrugs whenever the fascination with his sweet swing comes up.
"The majority of time, with two strikes, I'll choke up on the bat a little bit to try to stay as short as possible," he said. "It doesn't always work out like that, but that's the goal. I just try to put as many good at-bats together as I can."
The last time a left-handed hitter homered twice off a lefty pitcher in a World Series game was 1928. A guy named Babe Ruth.
In swing and results, Utley's keeping some serious company these days. Here's hoping he enjoys it.
(Contact Jeff Blair at blairj(at)globeandmail.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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