Maybe the Mets Fans Can March on MLB- Utley is Rightly Cleared

Chase Utley broke Ruben Tejada's leg last October in Game Two of the NLDS between the Dodgers and Mets. He came in hard on a takeout slide at second base to break up a double play, and he clobbered Tejada. The Mets shortstop's season was over, and Utley played the remainder of the series while he appealed a two-game suspension handed down from Joe Torre. The LA Times explains the chain of events:

Utley barreled hard and late into Tejada, whose back was turned to the runner, while breaking up a double play in Game 2 of the National League division series.

In announcing the suspension for what an MLB statement called an “illegal slide,” chief baseball officer Joe Torre cited Utley for a “rolling block … away from the base.”

However, such a slide was not explicitly outlawed until Feb. 25, when MLB adopted a new rule to protect middle infielders on slides into second.

“I think at the time, he felt he needed to make a quick decision,” Utley said of Torre. “Obviously, in the playoffs, there’s a lot of attention brought to that, and he did what he felt he needed to do.

“I talked to Joe Torre at length on the phone, and he expressed to me that what happened in the playoffs, after looking at other slides over the course of the years, it was not much different.”

Of course, they do leave out a few steps in this- like the Mets carrying Tejada out to the field and acting like some real tragedy had befallen their shortstop, David Wright insinuating that Utley tried to hurt him, Joe Torre taking the cowardly road and appeasing the New York media with a suspension, and the ridiculous debate that came after.

The truth is that Torre was wrong to issue the suspension, and he has correctly admitted that now by lifting it. The truth is that Utley's slide was pretty rough, but not so far out of the normal to warrant action. The truth is that MLB eventually got to the right answer, lifting the suspension and instituting a new rule that makes clear they will suspend in the future. All's well that ends well.

Of course, not to Ruben Tejada. And David Wright is shooting his mouth off with the normal drivel too:

Wright noted that the rule changes were an acknowledgment by MLB that Utley had done wrong. “One hundred percent,” the Met captain said. “We were upset that the first thing he hit was a body part and not the ground. I’ve always been taught a slide occurs on the ground.”

Wright says MLB acknowledged that Utley was wrong- by not suspending him. Okay David. Okay.