Chase Utley Making it Hard to Believe He’s Totally Fine

A citywide pressure valve gets pulled today, as Phillies baseball is witnessed in Spring Training form for the first time in what feels like a billion years.  Endless nightmares of forever darkness and jagged ice storms have finally cracked open and allowed us to inhale deeply the fresh, open scent of wait where’s Chase.

Personally, I don’t understand what is so hard about answering relentless, prodding questions about what is and isn’t wrong with your own body in front of  a big group of people with cameras whose job it is to tell even bigger groups of people what is and isn’t wrong with your body.  Hell, I’ll go outside and field questions right now.  I guarantee there won’t be any reporters out there, though…again. It’ll just be me, shouting updates on my malfunctioning nervous system at my downstairs neighbor.

Chase Utley isn’t a man who sees the need to keep you in the loop.  Oh, we get enough information to keep us happy–He likes puppies!  He feels nice!  He works out!–but Chase isn’t going to call a press conference just so he can feel the flash of cameras on his face and soak in the deeply satisfying inquiries of a press corps with nothing better to do.

So we’re not going to get much more than the “general soreness” routine he and Charlie are using that is excusing him from playing in today’s first Grapefruit League contest against the Yankees at 1:05.  That could mean anything from “He just worked the hell out too much” to “There’s an alien baby growing inside of his small intestine” to “Chiggers.  Just… everywhere.  No idea where they came from.”

Obviously this isn’t a reason for concern, unless its the alien thing, because Charlie Manuel wasn’t updating us while sobbing into his hands.