All Star Chase Utley Performs on the Field and Off:

The 2007 National League East Division Champion Philadelphia Phillies have a conditioned second baseman in Chase Utley. He plays hard at the game both in the field and at the plate. And the two-time all-star takes nothing for granted, except at the start of the off-season. 

That’s when he heads home to Carson, CA., and “hangs out for three to four weeks to let my body heal,” says Utley who in 2006 set the singleseason record for Philadelphia second basemen with 32 home runs and 131 runs scored. He also hit .309, drove in 102 runs and put together a 35-game hitting streak which was that year’s longest streak in the majors. Last year he proved that 2006 was no fluke. Although sidelined with a broken right hand for 27 games after being hit by a pitch on an 0-2 count from Washington Nationals pitcher John Lannan on July 26 as the Phillies began their push to the National League East crown, he hit .332 with 22 home runs and 103 runs batted in, and managed to play in 132 games.

If you’re keeping score at home, since joining the big club in 2003 (and signed to a contract that runs through the 2013 season), Utley has logged 4,628 major league innings, not counting spring training, played with a degree of intensity often evidenced by the dirt on his uniform.

It’s no wonder why the 29–year-old all-star “hangs out” after the final out of a season. It’s also why conditioning is so important to Utley’s success. “I lay my body on the line a lot,” says Utley, who stands 6´ 1˝ and weighs in around 185 lbs. “I’m fairly lucky about how my body has held up so far.”

While good fortune may have something to do with it, Utley doesn’t totally bank on it. He more than realizes that to play baseball at the level he enjoys inning after inning, game after game, takes a serious attitude to conditioning and self-discipline.

“Your playing condition is extremely important,” he says referring to the grind of a 162–game season. “You have to be able to withstand the ups and downs, the hot and the cold weather. It definitely takes a toll. Some days you feel strong; some days you feel weak.” He also mentions “the humidity in Philly is a grind on your body.” It’s not unusual for him to lose ten pounds during the course of a season.

There are also road trips across time zones and a schedule that occasionally seems unforgiving, not to mention the pressures of day-to-day play in the big leagues.

Add them all up and their sum total can suddenly short-circuit a player’s performance, especially in the final weeks of the season when making the playoffs is in the balance and the pressure to win is turned up to the boiling point. It’s a pressure cooker that sometimes forces players to overextend themselves and to risk injury or fatigue, thus underlining the paramount need to stay in shape through a solid conditioning routine that doesn’t start on the opening day of spring training. How many times have managers lamented that a key player or a hot prospect has shown up in camp either overweight or out of shape?

You won’t find Chase Utley in that category.

Ready for Action

Other than those three or four weeks in the fall, Philadelphia’s No. 3 hitter stays focused on conditioning all year long. He follows a workout routine that lasts about 2 ½ hours, but starts out slow in the off-season after that brief time out when he returns to his home in southern California. Prior to each workout beginning Jan. 1, Chase takes hitting practice for an hour each day, five days a week.

The first 20 minutes of his workout is an active warmup consisting of running, stretching, and a lot of movement. Then it gets more involved with an emphasis on strengthening and stretching his posterior, hips, and legs. Agility and balance are addressed with a series of forward and side-to- side exercises and one-legged balances. Picture the grace of a pivot at second base on a double play or the ease of going far right to catch up to a grounder hit toward the middle of the infield. It’s the stuff agility and balance provide.

The second hour sees him in the weight room for 15 minutes or so. “I’m not getting bigger,” he points out, “I’m getting stronger.”

There some intense lifting takes place that includes squats, pull ups and bench presses. “With the presses and pulls, I activate the core— my butt, hips, and legs, making them stronger and stretching them at the same time.”

Picture the head-first dives into a base or the over-the-shoulder catches of soft flies trying to find an open space in the no-man’s land between second base and right field.

But the fun isn’t over yet. Cardiovascular work is next on the agenda with Chase spending time at a number of cardio-oriented stations. The versiclimber, a sort of stair climber with handles, is the highlight of this conditioning phase. “You strap your feet in and the handles are above your head,” explains Utley, adding with a slight chuckle, “You can go as fast as you want to go.”

He winds up the 2½ hours with 20 minutes worth of jump lunges. Picture getting a jump on a slow-hit infield grounder to the right side.

Watch any pre-game warmup session at Citizens Bank Park and you’ll see a fair amount of time given to stretching exercises that put players into yoga-like positions. The goal is to keep players loose and to increase or maintain their flexibility on the field.

A couple of years ago, the Phillies decided to include hip stretching exercises in Utley’s workout routine. He had noticed and still does that his hips tend to get a bit tight. Those hip stretches are beneficial, says Utley. “They make you more limber,” he points out. “You get loose but are still strong.” One of the advantages to the hip stretches the Phillies have seen is that a player can turn that much faster on a pitch. That’s a definite competitive edge, especially when a fast ball is coming in to a batter at speeds between 90 and 95 mph or more from a mere 60 feet, 6 inches away.

Utley rigidly maintains his conditioning routine through the other 48 or 49 weeks of the year. After all, he is the starting second baseman for the National League East’s division champions. Utley admits there are days when lying in bed for a couple of extra hours instead of getting up at 7 a.m. is mighty tempting. But then reality kicks in with its own brush-back pitch.

“I want to get better,” the all-star second baseman says flat out. “There are plenty of guys who want to take my job. I want to maintain it and get better. So, I get up and go work out.”

Conditioning Plus Self-Discipline

“At the big league level you do what you need to get ready,” Utley says. “The coaches are there for you, but you have to get in some kind of routine. It’s self-discipline…all self-discipline— absolutely.”

When Utley came up from Triple A in 2003, he enjoyed the rare thrill of becoming a teammate of a player after whom he had patterned himself when he was in high school at Long Beach Polytechnic: the all-Philadelphia slugging first baseman, Jim Thome. Chase noticed at that time how Thome, “the man in Cleveland,” approached hitting which included an open stance at the plate. “The open stance worked for Thome, it works for me,” he says.

Thome, now a designated hitter with the Chicago White Sox, was a fixture at third base and first base for the Cleveland Indians from 1991 to 2002. But Utley learned a lot more from Thome, a fan’s and player’s player. “From Jim, I learned how to conduct myself on and off the field. He showed me what it takes to be a leader.”

“You have to be as prepared as possible,” he continues, “for a single pitch, a single at-bat. You’re always trying to get an edge on a hitter or a pitcher.”

As much as the pressures of Major League play more often than not force players to over extend themselves, Utley reins himself in. “Try to stay within yourself,” he says. “When you try to do too much, it puts you in a hole.”

His hitting stats stand in testimony to that philosophy. Last year he hit .318 against lefthanded pitching and .340 against right-handers. He struck out only 89 times in 530 at-bats and had a sixth-best league on-base percentage of .410, up from .379 in 2006.

It doesn’t take much to realize that Utley not only hits for average but also knows how to hit in the clutch. In 2006, he tied for eighth in the National League with 14 game winning RBI. Last year while missing a full month of play because of his broken hand, he had 12 gamewinning RBI, which was only second to the 19 of Colorado Rockies left fielder Matt Holliday. (The Rockies went on to to the World Series, only to get swept by the Boston Red Sox, four games to none.) Utley’s .332 batting average in 2007 was third best in the league. In three full-time seasons with the Phillies, he has driven in 105 runs in 2005, 102 runs in 2006, and 103 runs in 2007.

To say that Utley is poised for greatness as he enters his prime playing years is probably an understatement. However, this hard-nosed player knows success or even staying with a big league club doesn’t come easy. “There’s no way around it,” he says. “If you want to succeed, you have to grind it out in the big leagues. Big leaguers have perfected what they do. They do it over and over again ‘til they get it right. It’s practice and preparing.”

That’s why even in pre-game practice, big leaguers make fielding, hitting, and throwing look so effortless at 6 p.m.

For Utley, pre-game practice usually begins around 1 p.m. “No one gets to the big leagues for free,” says the two-time National League all-star. “You have to take the time seriously. I want to improve defensively. I’ve taken a lot of ground balls.”

No Time for Couch Potatoes

Utley realizes that at some point his playing days will come to an end, but that will not signal an end to his conditioning. “I want to stay fit,” he says with determination. “I would love to play baseball at 40. With a good routine now, it could be possible then.”

Chase is a firm believer in developing a routine that works for an individual. “I can imagine it will be more difficult [at 40],” he quietly admits. “But I’ll get on some sort of routine and get on some kind of workout.”

In the meantime, he is focusing on helping the Phillies defend their National League East division championship for fans he calls the best and toughest fans in the world. “I really enjoy Philly and I like the intensity the city has,” he says. “In California, the fans are laid back and you might hear a boo. Philly fans understand and are into it [baseball]. They treat me extremely well.”

It is part of the passionate nature of the Philadelphia fan’s psyche to take to a player like Utley, who doesn’t take one moment of baseball for granted. And he doesn’t want to disappoint them. “My goal every year is to improve and play in the World Series.”

Picture Chase Utley and the Phillies playing in October.

A Worthy Cause

Keeping physically fit and in condition works for Chase Utley. It’s probably the underlying reason why he and his wife Jennifer have become deeply involved with the Pennsylvania Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA). That and the fact that he says that while growing up in Long Beach, Calif., there were animals in his life. “Cats, birds, dogs, rabbits—it felt like a zoo at our house,” he fondly remembers. Last year Jennifer began doing volunteer work for the PSPCA, located at 350 East Erie Avenue in Philadelphia. One day, Etana came to the shelter. A pit bull mix, she was abused, and was suffering from burns.

Jennifer took one look at Etana and knew she had to do something for the animal. “I was driving up to Reading on rehab assignment (from his broken hand) and she called me,” recalls Chase.

“I want to take care of the medical expenses for this dog,” Jennifer said. The rest is history as Etana recovered from her wounds and, according to Chase, “is doing great.”