Domonic Brown Having Hell of an Afternoon Already

Domonic Brown has been hitting pretty well, to the tune of the NL league lead in home runs.

That sort of unsubtle power will get you attention, which Dom now has.  ESPN, CBS, Deadspin… everybody is now craning their necks to catch of a glimpse of who Philebrity called “our new Ryan Howard.”  Which is a terrible thing to say.

So, now the scrutiny happens.  Not the normal scrutiny on a top five prospect who, by the players’ admission, is mishandled by the team, but is blamed without recourse for his poor performance over the course of a few years.  Could we have benefited from a tremendously powerful bat in the lineup at any point since he debuted in 2010?

Oh my god yes.

But that’s not the type of scrutiny Dom will fall under now.  I mean, it is.  All the Dom-haters are still out there, they’re just pretending to have been his original fan club for the time being.  But don’t worry.  They’ll turn back. Their’s just won’t be the only kind of scrutiny out there.

May 28, 2013; Boston, MA USA; Philadelphia Phillies left fielder Domonic Brown (9) rounds the bases after hitting a home run during the ninth inning against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports

Now, he’s got the attention of the Heyman’s and the Morosi’s and the wanna-be Heyman’s and Morosi’s populating Twitter.  Everybody’s got an arsenal of comically over the top positive verbiage they want to use to describe the trendy new slugger, but soon, when he’s old hat, everybody’s got their nasty, crappiness waiting to be unleashed.

So, yeah, let’s use our fancy vocabularies to glorify Dom Brown.  Seeing him succeed has been one of the most… uh, good… things to come out of Phillies baseball in about two years.  He’s set the bar high for himself, and without a quality team around him, he’s about to be under some pressure.  Should he keep this up, all is well.  Should he falter in the slightest, and they’ll be on him.

Having watched him over the past few years, you wonder how a kid who looked like he forgot how to catch a fly ball a year ago would handle that kind of stress.  There have been players on this team who tried to take on too much and buckled under the pressure.  The hope is that Brown is not a delicate flower; that his teammates are right, and his labeling as a “head case” was the result of the team mishandling him, not a reflection of the strength of his mindset.

And now, he’s not only your two-time NL Player of the Week, he just took over the whole month.

BOW BEFORE DOM.

So why don’t we just get lost in this for a while, because chances are, this season could have very easily not had any bright spots.