Sam Donnellon | It's a stop-and-goat life for 3B coach

THE NATIONAL-television guys were perplexed. Up by six runs in the eighth, your top star barreling full speed toward third with the intent to score, it seemed like the wise thing to do, holding Chase Utley right there.

No need to risk injury. No reason to rub it in.

Nothing Steve Smith does in this town, though, is deemed wise. Not since that late May night in Florida, when the excitement of a contentious night got the best of the Phillies' third-base coach, and Smith foolishly tried to score Michael Bourn on a double, even after the rookie stopped at second to make sure the ball was not caught.

So Smith was booed again Saturday, as he was the night before, when he sent Utley - and he was out at home. And he will be booed again, any time he sends a runner into an out at home, or mutes our anticipation of a score by raising those palms of his.

"We're like the long snappers in football," Smith was saying in the Phillies' clubhouse before Sunday's game. "You don't know who the long snapper is until he hikes it over the guy's head."

Phillies fans have made quick study of their long snappers. With nine seasons as a third-base coach on his resumé, Smith was brought here to upgrade the position held by Bill Dancy - whom the fans booed back into minor league oblivion. Smith would make smart decisions. He would earn this team wins, not cost them. He would be a

difference-maker.

He would snap it clean and true.

The job has some bugs, he has learned. The brain cramp in Florida was all him, but there is a train of thought that coaching third in the Phillies' home bandbox presents some unique challenges. It's a hard place to get a read on the ball.

"Because it's more shallow," said Smith, who has counted 12 Phillies runners who have been thrown out at home this year. Compare that to their league-leading 31 outfield assists and you're talking, in hockey terms, a healthy plus-minus.

That's not how we think, though, and he knows it.

"I might have cost us that game in Florida," he said. "So they say I'm 0-and-1. And maybe I blew another one, so I'm 0-and-2. But when do I get a chance to win a game? I could be 10-2 but no one cares about the ones I held or sent in and scored. You don't get saves. You just get blown saves. You don't get wins. You only get the loss."

This might sound like a gripe. Really, it was more job description. Smith said it with a bemused smile, the same smile he wears when he is asked about the boos.

"They might have bothered me in my younger days, but not now," he said. He will be 55 on Saturday, in his 10th season as a major league third-base coach. And while Philly is definitely a different vibe from Texas or Seattle, he has enjoyed his notoriety here.

"When I was in Texas, I could send my mother in," he said. "The park is so much deeper that a monkey could coach in Texas sometimes because if you hit it in the gap there, I don't care who you are at first there, you're going to score. It's like Colorado, you have to play so deep.

"Here, it's like two shortstops sometimes. You know what, though? The new ballparks are all like that. You saw what happened in the All-Star Game. Two balls off the fence, with those angles. You don't get that anywhere else. So everybody looks at it after it happens and it's easy to make the call. But when it's happening and you're making a judgment right now, it's not so easy."

So here are his reasons for holding Utley. No need to get him hurt. No need to rub in a late six-run lead.

You argue that six runs in the ninth, in this park with the Phillies' bullpen, is hardly an insurmountable lead. Smith nods and smiles again. "It all got factored in," he said.

"I remember coming here from Texas when we played the Phillies 2 years ago," he said with a laugh. "And I said, 'Thank goodness I don't have to coach third base here.' I told their coaches, 'You can have this place.' "

And now?

"I love it," he said. "I love the action. You fall asleep even a little, you get burned. It's the only sport where you have a coach on the field who's going to have something to do with the game sometimes."

For better.

And worse. *

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