Let us hark back to the time when a 24-year old upstart named Chase Utley got called up to the bigs for the first time, shall we?

Early on in the season in 2003 — April 15th to be exact — then-Phillies second basemen Placido Polanco got hit by a Josh Beckett fastball smack dab on his finger which forced him out of the game. While he waited for his finger to heal, utility man Tomas Perez filled in (admirably, I might add) at second. But nine days later, Placido realized the pain was far too bad to even grip a bat, so the Phillies retroactive’d him to the DL and called up this skinny little punk from UCLA named Chase Utley to take his roster spot.

Then, on April 24th, Chase made his first start as an MLBer batting in the 8-hole behind David Bell (hahahhahahhahah), and in his very first at-bat*… he flew out to shallow left. BUT, on his second, Chase absolutely CRUSHED an Aaron Cook pitch and hit a grand slam to right scoring Jim Thome, Mike Lieberthal, and David Bell.

Watch it:

*Whoops. Forgot about this.

I don’t normally approve of flagrant showboating because it strikes me as a display of poor sportsmanship.

But that’s mostly because it usually isn’t done with such style. Sarge took dude’s heart right here. This is just vulgar in all the right ways.

A couple of years after being selected by the Phillies with the first overall pick of the 1998 draft, the greatest hitter in the history of college baseball (From? The U.) made his long-awaited major league debut. On May 24th, 2000 — his first appearance with the team — a young Pat Burrell was immediately inserted into the fifth spot of a not-so-dangerous Phillies lineup with the hopes of becoming the best power hitter this town has witnessed since Mike Schmidt.

It just doesn’t seem right thinking about it now, but Pat actually wore the #33 and manned first base during his rookie campaign. At the time, Ron Gant was wearing The Bat’s future #5 and keeping his spot in left field warm for him. In late 2000, we got Travis Lee — a gold glove-caliber first baseman — in the Schilling trade, and shipped Ron Gant out to Anaheim for Kent Bottenfield which cleared the way for Pat to occupy the same position he’s been in since August 9th, 2000 — left fielder for the Philadelphia Phillies.

It seems like forever-ago, but I remember it perfectly. And I’m sorry, these are therapeutic type-of posts are published for the sole purpose of helping me get through this. Pat caught some major shit in this town — the way he handled it should be documented and distributed to every athlete that suits up for a Philadelphia sports team. And for that, Pat, I’m appreciative.

THE LEGEND OF PAT BURRELL SHALL LIVE ON.

After the jump, a couple fantastic photos from his younger days…

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I’d assume a large majority of Philadelphia sports fans don’t remember much about the day Charlie Manuel was hired to manage the Fightin’ Phils.

Afterall, when he was officially given the coaching nod in November of ‘04, the Phillies were coming off a year in which they finished a disappointing ten games behind the Braves and fired Larry Bowa with two games remaining in the season.   Couple that with the fact that Donovan, T.O. & Westbrook were 7-0 at the time, us fans had our sights set on the Super Bowl.  If the new Phillies manager wasn’t a World Series winning, chain-smoking skip whose name rhymes with Kim Peehand, that move wasn’t even being printed in one of those little boxes on the back page of the Daily News.

In fact, there were several other candidates — including: Grady Little (hired and fired by the Dodgers since), Don Baylor (hasn’t managed), Buddy Bell (hired and fired by the Royals since), Terry Pendleton (hasn’t managed), and John Russell (currently managing the Pirates).  But Ed Wade stuck to his “gut” and picked Cholly.  We dismissed it as a low-budget move from a horribly run franchise who have no interest in winning; just making money in their beautiful new stadium.

Not me though, I always knew we’d win a World Series with Charlie.

After the jump, a prophetic quote from Charlie’s first day on the job and video of his press conference.

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Philadelphia luminary D-Mac of the fantastic Philadelphia Will Do sent along a hilarious video this morning of South Philly Sal getting ready to gun down a young Josh Willingham at 2nd.  D-Mac explains:

Way back on May 2, 2006, the Phillies played the Marlins; everyone’s favorite little catcher that could, Sal Fasano, went 0-4 with 2 Ks, dropping his average to .182. (The Phillies rallied to win, incidentally.) But that wasn’t the worst part of Fasano’s night. With Wes Helms (ha!) at the plate, Josh Willingham attempted to steal second.

Sal’s Pals Are Surely Misguided | Philadelphia Will Do (May 3, 2006)

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