THESE are the small things, the every-day things, that define who the Phillies are, that explain all they do, all they’ve accomplished. These are the at-bats. This is the mind-set. And this is the player: Chase Cameron Utley, who may have been brought up in Southern California but plays with a stubborn tenacity that is all South Philly.
“The best guy I’ve ever been around to coach,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said last night. “The most prepared guy I’ve ever known.”
These are the small moments when you can either seize a baseball game or not, take it for yourself or leave it out there, still available for the other guys. This was the third inning, and CC Sabathia was matching Cliff Lee zero-for-zero, pitch-for-pitch. It seemed both men could do this for hours, reducing splendid hitters to piles of sawdust.
There were two outs, nobody on base. Sabathia jumped ahead of Utley, 1-and-2, and this is when Sabathia is usually at his killer best, when he chews up lefties like so many jelly beans. But this is also when Utley is at *** his *** most dangerous. He refused to swing at Sabathia’s sliders. He refused to give in on his sinkers. He fouled three nasty pitches off. He built the count full.
“He outlasts the pitcher,” Manuel said. “That’s what he does.”
That’s what he did. Sabathia, weary from the fight, threw a fastball, and it wasn’t a good one. Utley clobbered it, sending in a path parallel to the right-field foul line. You might say you’ve never heard 50,207 people fall so silent so suddenly, but that would mean you’ve missed Utley’s work at Shea Stadium and Citi Field the past few years.
“When you get a pitch like that,” Utley said, shrugging, maybe half an hour after the Phillies completed this 6-1 schooling of the Yankees in Game 1 of the 105th World Series, “you can’t miss them.”
Utley has been doing these things from the moment he came up to the Phillies in 2003, from the moment — as a green, raw rookie — he laid out his leg in front of second base so a would-be base stealer’s spikes never quite made it to the bag, but strafed Utley’s flesh instead. Larry Bowa was managing the Phillies then, and even this ultimate dirty uniform was taken aback.
“Kid,” Bowa told him, “you keep playing that way, you’re gonna get hurt.”
To which Utley, the rookie, replied, “[Bleep] it, as long as we win.”
Yeah. You want Chase Utley on your baseball team. You would move heaven and earth to get Chase Utley on your baseball team. You would pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to secure his services on your baseball team.
You want another story? Here’s another story. Before he took Sabathia deep — and before he took him deep again, a few innings later — Utley came back from another 1-and-2 count in the first to work out a walk, a plate appearance that almost felt like a warm-up for the one to come two innings later.
That base on balls marked the 26th consecutive postseason game in which Utley reached base, breaking a record that Boog Powell had held for 38 years. Someone asked him about it afterward.
“I didn’t know about it,” he said.
Of course he didn’t. That is how Utley is, it is who Utley is. A few years ago, he brought a long hitting streak to Shea Stadium and you almost needed to hire henchmen to beat a few quotes out of him about it.
No, Utley is the kind of player whose value can be boiled down to the most vital denominator of all. He wins. He beats you. He knows how to the play the game and play it well, knows how to hit a ball over a wall if he has to, how to foul off a half-dozen pitches if he has to, how to slide hard into second base when he has to, how to take an extra base when he has to.
In New York, we have written poetry about Derek Jeter for a decade and a half for playing in much the same way. By the time Utley is finished, it might be a local law in Philadelphia that he can be written about solely in iambic pentameter.
Burnett gets turn to be ace
WELL, we’ve wondered all October what it would be like if the Yankees’ No. 2 starter was forced to play the part of a No. 1, what would happen to A.J. Burnett if and when the Yankees found themselves in a must-win situation.
Would A.J. stand for Ace, Junior? Or would it stand for Ain’t Johan?
Today we find out. Last night, the Yankees ran into a buzzsaw named Cliff Lee, who turned their bats into sawdust in a 6-1 Phillies win.
Now the Yankees need Burnett to give them an ace-like start. He gets to go man-a-mano against Pedro Martinez.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Burnett said before the game. “Pedro’s done a tremendous thing. He’s come back and what he’s accomplished this year is great.”
As a guy who’ll be pitching in his first-ever World Series game, Burnett now not only gets to oppose Pedro, he does it with real stakes. He’s been able to stay in Sabathia’s shadow all season. Today, he must run toward the sun.
A minor miracle
1. ALMOST impossible to believe Cliff Lee was sent to minors two years ago. Maybe there’s hope for Kei Igawa yet.
2. Not for nothing but . . . Joe DiMaggio has only three fewer hits than Nick Swisher this postseason.
3. CC Sabathia pitched a fine game, but next to Lee he looked like Jose Lima.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com