Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

Tuesday, April 13, 1993     Page: 1C QUICK WORDS: CHAMBERLAIN MAY BE KEY
FOR PHILLIES

Chamberlain may be key for Phillies
   
Sometime in the middle of March, without really doing much other than
winning a few spring training games, the Philadelphia Phillies underwent an
image changeConsidered something of a joke, a band of sure losers, when spring
training began, the Phillies suddenly started getting some positive press and,
as members of a weak National League Eastern Division, were elevated to
contenders for a division title.
    When the Phillies broke camp just over a week ago, manager Jim Fregosi said
his team had a great spring.
   
“Everybody’s anxious to get out and do some work,” he said.
   
A week into the 1993 season, the Phillies have done it to the extent that
it is not far-fetched to say they will be in the NL East race for the long
haul. They won five of their first six games and pounded some of the best
pitchers in the league to season-opening losses.
   
Darren Daulton signed a big contract and, rather than resting on his
paycheck, went on a home run binge.
   
Curt Schilling went out Sunday and, rather than be intimidated by a
hard-hitting Chicago Cubs lineup, pitched a four-hitter.
   
And even Milt Thompson and Pete Incaviglia, the free-agent acquisitions
everybody seemed to be laughing at in January, had produced big hits early on
to help the Phillies sweep their season-opening series in Houston.
   
Now, after a series against one of the league’s best teams, Cincinnati, and
a trip to Chicago over the next few days, the Phillies get to play 15 games
against the Dodgers, Padres and Giants, hardly teams they should fear at this
point in the season.
   
They have a legitimate shot at a winning April, and perhaps even can win 20
games in the month.
   
It seems as if maybe all those pessimists who became optimists sometime in
March were right. Maybe the Phillies can win the division … this year, no
less.
   
Are they really that good? Probably not. Their pitching still has to be
considered suspect and, sooner or later, Mitch Williams will have a problem
closing out games.
   
But they’ve been so good over the first week of the season that they’ve
been compared to the great Gashouse Gang teams from St. Louis of 60 years ago.
   
Not because they are as talented as those teams, mind you. But because
they’re scrappy, and because they have rowdy, wild-eyed players such as
Williams, Len Dykstra, John Kruk and Daulton.
   
JUMP ME PLEASE
   
Ironically, though, the key to the Phillies’ success, to their ability to
make a legitimate run at the division title, might be a player who hardly fits
the image of those guys.
   
The key to the Phillies’ immediate future, quite frankly, might be one
Wesley Polk Chamberlain.
   
He showed up late for a game the other day and shook the team down to its
farm system. Can he get along with Fregosi? Are they going to send him down to
the Red Barons? What will he do if he is sent to the minors — something he
not so long ago allegedly compared to being sent to the nether regions?
   
Chamberlain isn’t the Phillies’ best hitter. He isn’t their best fielder.
He probably isn’t their strongest player, or their fastest.
   
And he certainly isn’t their most popular.
   
Despite all that, however, the Phillies need Chamberlain if they’re going
to make a run.
   
They might think they don’t need him in the clubhouse, in the dugout, or
wherever. They might think his inner-city, talk-the-talk/walk-the-walk
attitude isn’t something with which they should have to deal.
   
But the fact is, they need his right-handed bat in the lineup to protect
all those big-name, big-budget left-handers.
   
And they need his ability to bust a game open. They need his ability to
carry a team, the way he did the Red Barons when he was sent down last year.
   
Even if they don’t like him — and some of them apparently don’t — they
need him.
   
And if the Phillies can’t or won’t admit that, then the pessimists turned
optimists might have to go back to being pessimists again before the summer is
over.
   
Bill Savage is a Times Leader sports writer. His column appears Tuesday and
Thursday.