Hot on the heels of Bill Conlin's latest statement of the obvious--that Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins are the greatest Phillies ever at their respective positions--comes this series of philly.com polls on the greatest Phils ever at every position.
My votes, and thus my Phillies all-time team, went as follows:
P Carlton
C Boone
1B Howard
2B Utley
3B Schmidt (how dare they even ask this one?)
SS Rollins
LF Ennis
CF Ashburn
RF Klein
MGR Ozark
The only ones that gave me real pause were catcher, right field, and manager. Boone over Seminick or Lieberthal is a really close call; it ultimately comes down to my subjective memories of the old guy from the '70s and the fact that the team was so good then. Similarly, I voted for Ozark--whom I don't think was anything special as a manager--because the other options were Gene Mauch, who presided over the 1964 collapse; Dallas Green, wrecker of arms and enduring big mouth; Bowa, 'nuff said; and Jim Fregosi, who left Mitch Williams in to pitch the end of Game Six. In an open poll, my vote probably would have been for Eddie Sawyer, who skippered the 1950 Whiz Kids, or Uncle Cholly Himself. In right field, Klein seems to translate for all-time, but really who knows. It's probably a jump ball between him and Bobby Abreu--who has drawn a surprising 14 percent of the total vote as of this writing.
No closer is listed, I guess out of fear that someone would disrespect the Tugger's memory. Fair enough.