My favorite athletes have rarely been the supremely talented ones. I cheered against Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky, the best ever in their respective sports. Though I bleed orange-and-black, Eric Lindros was not even close to my favorite Flyer during his time in Philadelphia. I guess true to my Philly roots, I prefer the guys who might have less talent but really make the most of it. The working class sports figures who overcome their shortcomings, rough upbringings, or devastating injuries to live up to the overused sports clichés of being “lunch pail” guys who “leave it all on the field.” The ones whose toughness and tenacity are easy to see. Not that they don’t have tremendous talent, but because of the way they played, I’ll take Allen Iverson and Brian Dawkins any day over Jordan or Deion Sanders.
Darren Daulton was another one of those guys. Marginally athletic and cursed with bad knees, Dutch is still my favorite Phillie ever. People talk about leadership in sports but very few players are completely respected in the locker room as the unquestioned leader of the team. Dutch was for the 1993 Phillies team that had no business taking the Blue Jays to six games in the World Series but did so, due in no small part to his guidance. And he was that again for the 1997 champion Marlins, even though he didn’t even join them until July of that year. Multiple Marlins players and coaches of that era have said that they wouldn’t have won the World Series without Dutch’s leadership.
After baseball, Darren Daulton struggled with addiction and other issues and ran afoul of the law once or twice. But unlike so many others, he was able to pull himself back from the abyss. Beloved by former friends and former teammates – even the ones he criticized – Dutch was a baseball original. I’ve heard a lot of stories from fans who met him and they all paint a picture of a down-to-earth dude of humor and kindness. I heard hockey commentator Al Morganti say that Daulton was one of the few baseball players who could fit in with the guys in a hockey locker room, which is a huge compliment. Dutch had the toughness and tenacity that would be respected by any athlete. The cat really left it all out there.