A 'live' baseball captured on a baseball card rarely disappoints. On this one, you can even see the laces. That suggests to me that Utley hasn't made contact with the ball yet, because when that has already happened in a photograph, with the ball that close to the bat, the ball usually blurs significantly, and quite often appears as no longer perfectly round, even. If Utley had just finished driving the ball with the bat a split-second before the shutter-click, I suspect the baseball would look much different in the photo.
There also appears to be a bit of shadow on the bat, caused by the actual baseball in the directly overhead sunlight. Although it is exciting to see the live pitch and live swing in this image, it seems highly likely we are about to hear a "Strike!" or whatever odd sound the Ump will make to indicate the same. Though perhaps Utley still has a chance to Foul it off with some brief minor contact on the top of the bat.
This striking image seems so familiar on baseball cards of the 2010s that it made me reach for the adjacent binder for the 2014 set, to see how many examples it held. I only found one, the Avisail Garcia card, on a pleasant journey back through that set. Something I always enjoy about baseball cards; when one card leads you off into absorbing other cards.
There is definitely one more identical card to this arriving later in the set, and Topps has never stopped using this vantage point for cards throughout the 2010s. I am not always a fan of an action shot that obscures a player's face, but I guess with the number of different baseball cards produced annually for many players, particularly extremely popular players of Utley's caliber, it is probably better to produce a card like this.
+Bonus points for a tiny Logoman on the back of Utley's uniform.
-Bonus points for the Umpire's fingers creepin' in off the side of the card.
Uniform Hero? Yes.
Where’d the egg hatch? Utley was drafted by the Phillies in the first round of the 2000 draft, selected 15th overall, and broke in with them in 2003.
How about the migrations? When this card was produced, one would have thought there would be an excellent chance that Utley would retire a Phillie, as similar to so many of the players near him here on the checklist. A highly successful member of a relatively recent World Series winner, why wouldn't he play his whole career in Philadelphia?
One thing that reading baseball cards does not reveal much about the game is the ceaseless chatter from all the other fans, specifically on the way rosters are constructed. Fans often decry the loss of favorite players, but at the same time many other fans can often want to 'cut bait' on most any player the instant they don't make an All-Star team.
So it was for Philadelphia around the time of the Sea Turtle cards - some fans were more than ready to drop all of the remaining World Series heroes on the club and pick up a new set of Legos, err, prospects, and start over. The Phillies brass eventually agreed though by the time they did, with just 6 weeks to go in the 2015 season they could only essentially purchase a pair of unlikely prospects from the Dodgers by sending Utley to L.A. while still paying a portion of his remaining salary.
Still, as one would expect for a player sporting the descriptor noted on the back of his card, Utley wished to keep playing even at a reduced salary (in his hometown, too) and he went on to complete 3 more increasingly part-time seasons with the Dodgers, drawing some praise for his intangible "veteran leadership" that remains largely inscrutable to those of us outside of a Major League clubhouse.
He announced his retirement during the 2018 season; it is thought he will draw a healthy amount of votes for the Hall of Fame some day, making this 3rd binder page in the set the 3rd page, sequentially, likely to hold multiple Hall of Famers some day.
Don’t flip over real Turtles.
A bit of a prescient effort here by Topps as that highly respectful adjective for Utley would really come into use around him the year of his retirement. A more telling nickname for Chase is revealed on his Baseball Reference page: "The Man."
Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?
CAREER CHASE: With 779 runs, Utley is 1,516 away from Rickey Henderson's all-time record of 2,295.
I would expect few baseball fans check out a player's Runs total in any given year; even more than with RBI stats most would understand how beyond a player's control scoring a Run is - except for the best base stealers in the game, who help manufacture them.
But it seems clear this selection was made obvious by Utley's sole League Lead up there in red in his stats. Still, invoking Rickey Henderson leads the reader to consider any potential ability to steal bases. This reveals a single 20-20 season for Utley, in his 7th season, which would be a bit late to become a noted base stealer, manufacturing Runs along the way.
Utley would retire having scored 1,103 Runs.
Subspecies? Naturally for such an epic baseball card, Topps would want to use this elsewhere, and it does appear in both Opening Day and Chrome. A short print / photo variation did arrive with this card # inserted in Series 2 packs, of the "Autographs" variety.
Bling That Shell As we will see with the final card on this binder page, I have not quite set this card in stone, in terms of parallel desired. I would rather have a Toys-R-Us Purple card here, to preserve a little more of the totality of the live game action, much of which disappears on a foil card. Hopefully that will become true some day, but until then this card will be represented by an Emerald:
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