Nobody Should Vote for Chase Utley to Make the All-Star Team

Early reports indicate that despite being a despondent man in a windbreaker for most of the year, Chase Utley could be voted onto the NL All-Star team.

I don’t even understand why this is a good thing.  Chase doesn’t care about All-Star Games.  Chase cares about the ball bouncing in front of him and whether he is within reach to perform a classic awesome stop or not.  He cares about  the cringe on the opposing pitcher’s twitching face when he realizes he missed his spot by just enough that Chase Utley has guaranteed that baseball will never see its family again.

I can just see some jolly Phillies front office guy strutting up to Chase as he’s sitting in the dark in the video room, proud to be bringing him the news, and Chase wordlessly receiving it before recoiling even further into the shadows.

Chase Utley doesn’t want your human awards and honors. He can’t even run two days in a row.  There’s no reason to turn this into the NBA All-Star Game, when manic, salivating homers in Heat jerseys stuff the ballot box full of injured or clearly declining names that ESPN the Magazine told them to pick three years ago, because come on; its like ESPN, but a magazine.

The ASG is about whose good right now, and you can’t have patellar tendinitis, chondromalacia and bone inflammation and be good at baseball at the same time.  If you could, Chase would be doing it.  So unless he comes out before the end of May and turns professional baseball into an offensive buffet table, there’s no reason, truthful or symbolic, to waste an NL team spot on a guy whose right knee is slowly killing half of a city.