Roy Halladay really loves Chase Utley

By
Craig Calcaterra,

By
Craig Calcaterra

Published July 22, 2014 10:05 AM

I am fascinated by Roy Halladay’s Twitter account. There’s nothing spectacular about it really -- he’s a retired dude who likes to fish and play golf and stuff -- but because I can’t think of any ballplayer’s whose on-field and off-field personas are more different.

On the field Halladay was like the Terminator. He was always business, always serious. While his arm may have given out, you feel like he could still go 12-8 each year based on his intensity alone. It carried over into interviews too. He was never mean, but there was not a lot of emotion there. It was business and logic and zero nonsense.His Twitter feed, in contrast, shows him to be rather funny. Occasionally goofy in a good way. He dabbles in observational comedy and stuff. It’s kind of neat.

Today, the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association gave out its team-by-team Heart & Hustle Awards. They’re voted on by alumni and active Major League players and is presented annually to active players who “demonstrate a passion for the game of baseball and best embodies the values, spirit and traditions of the game.” Chase Utley won it for Philly, and Halladay went with the heart, going on a multi-tweet endorsement of Utley as a professional and a human being.

I began to read it with some amusement but then I started to kind of love it, mostly because it was a mix of Mac’s letter to Chase on “Always Sunny” and the “I love you, man!” stage of a bender, only done stone-cold sober at 2pm on a Tuesday.

Ignore the typos and there/their/our/are level of word mixups. The man was on a roll here and likely typing on his phone:

I struggle writing this due to the privacy of a man of integrity and the definition of a baseball player. In the video room in the stadium..