PHILADELPHIA — Joe Perruccio knows a professional baseball player when he sees one. And he didn't see one the first time he saw Chase Utley.
"He was a skinny little kid," Perruccio remembers of Utley, then a freshman at Long Beach Poly High. "He didn't have a lot of natural ability."
Ken Munger, another coach at Long Beach Poly, didn't think Utley was a pro prospect either. Especially not in comparison with Poly teammate Milton Bradley, who everyone knew was a future big-league All-Star.
"I could see that Milton was a sure major league ballplayer," Munger says. "I didn't really see the same in Chase."
Even his father, Dave, was fooled.
"He was always a good player. But nothing that would have suggested that he was going to be the guy that would go to the show," the elder Utley says. "Chase wasn't a kid who was on the USA baseball teams, under 16 and under 18 teams and stuff like that."
Maybe not.
But he has turned into a man who, at 30, is three wins away from his second consecutive World Series championship. Which is why Utley says he pinches himself every day to make sure none of this is a dream.
"Absolutely," he said after the Philadelphia Phillies' workout Friday in preparation for Game 3 of the World Series tonight. "Growing up playing baseball, obviously your dream is to play in the big leagues. And you don't really realize how far away that is until you get here and see how many good players that you played with, played against throughout your time growing up never had the opportunity to get to this level.
"It's definitely pretty surreal."
Especially when you consider Utley wasn't content proving everyone wrong by simply getting to the big leagues. Because once he got there, he really turned it on, making four All-Star teams in his five full seasons, averaging nearly 30 homers and more than 100 RBIs.
In Game 1 of the World Series on Wednesday he hit two home runs off the Yankees' CC Sabathia, becoming the first left-hander to hit two homers off a left-handed pitcher in a Series game since Babe Ruth in 1928.
And no less an authority than Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel, who has spent nearly five decades in the game, calls Utley "one of the best players that I've ever had. He might even be the best."
Not bad for a guy who was cut from the team in his first season at Long Beach Poly and played himself out of a starting infield spot in his first season at UCLA.
