RELATED: Chase Utley got away with a dirty slide that broke a player's leg because MLB didn't do its job
Dodgers second baseman Chase Utley has never been the poster for exceptional behavior, outside of his performance as an athlete. Most anything else about Utley comes off as brash and irresponsible. During the playoffs last year, Utley broke the leg of Mets Ruben Tejada on a slide and while the play may have been dirty, what occurred after was far more disgusting.
According to Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times, Utley's family has since received death threats from angry Mets fan. Utley moved his and his families location and wouldn't stay in the team hotel after game 2 of the NLDS.
His teammate Clayton Kershaw was unhappy with the way Utley was treated after the slide, saying what he had to go through was "unfair."
"Chase was playing the game the way he's always played." Kershaw said, according to the L.A. Times. "Obviously you never want anybody to get hurt. The game being in the playoffs, and all that stuff, magnified everything. But there's been a whole lot of slides a lot worse than that over the course of baseball [history]."
The Mets host the Dodgers in a three-game series starting today, to which Utley can expect boo's anytime he's in the sight of Mets fans. That's OK, Fans should boo, It's not okay to threaten a man's life and make him fear for his family because of something that happened on a baseball diamond. That's fans at their worst.
[h/t NBC Sports]
