Baseball’s newest Hall of Famer returns Friday to the place where it all began. If this were any other city in America, this would barely even be a story.
However … that city is Philadelphia. And that returning hero forgot to change his name to Utley or Rollins or Howard. So what’s going to happen Friday, when Scott Rolen enters the Phillies’ Wall of Fame? Hmmm. Good question.
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It’s preposterous to think that any fan base — even the proud, demanding fans of Philadelphia — would want to embrace the embarrassment of booing a returning Hall of Famer. But is that impossible? It’s Philadelphia, so …
“I’m not going to tell you that,” said the Phillies’ managing general partner, John Middleton, a man who acknowledges he pushed hard for Rolen’s Wall of Fame moment. “I don’t know. I’m not going to tell you that there’s no possibility (Rolen will get booed). … I’m hoping that when the time comes for the ceremony, they’ll be thinking more about what he did here, what he meant to us as an organization.”
OK, so here’s my advice to those fans, as a native Philadelphian:
Forget that Rolen wouldn’t sign a contract 21 years ago. … Forget that the Phillies then traded him, before the 2002 trade deadline, amid mounting sports-talk-show messiness and tension with his manager, Phillies icon Larry Bowa. … Forget that this guy chose to enter the Hall of Fame this summer as a St. Louis Cardinal.
Whatever.
This is a time to be appreciative of a special player who was one of the best third basemen in history.
This is a time to recognize the reasons the Phillies are honoring a player who redefined the standard of defensive greatness at his position. This is a time when no one should overlook that Rolen made a point of saying, on the podium this summer in Cooperstown, that none of this would have been possible without his years in Philadelphia.
So that’s my advice. Feel free to ignore it. (I’m used to that.) But how about taking the word of a man who is far more worth listening to? That would be Larry Bowa himself, who has spent 39 years of his life as a Phillies player, manager or coach.
Bowa spoke to The Athletic about Rolen a few days ago. Here are just five of the points he went out of his way to make:
• “I don’t believe that stuff about (how) he didn’t like the city,” Bowa said of Rolen. “I do believe that he wanted to win.” What Bowa witnessed close up was a star player whose Phillies teams had done almost nothing except lose — so naturally, that star player wanted to see more money spent and more management commitment to win before he signed on to stick around.
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• “I think that people didn’t understand him here,” Bowa said of Rolen. And that reminded him a lot of how Philadelphians “didn’t appreciate” the greatness of another Hall of Fame third baseman, Mike Schmidt, for over a decade.
• You know who else Rolen reminded Bowa of? Himself. I’d guess nobody saw that comp coming, but think about it: The burning desire to win. Their fearlessness to say what was on their mind. (“He doesn’t have a filter,” Bowa said, with a chuckle, “just like me.”) And one more bond we’ll get to momentarily.
• As for their sometimes-stormy player-manager relationship, Bowa expressed repeated regret that he had expected Rolen and other players to go about big-league life with the same old-school mindset he did: “There’s no question that was wrong,” Bowa said. “I say that to this day.”
• And finally, Bowa said, he expects Rolen to be cheered, not booed Friday because this isn’t the testy fan base that hung out in the upper reaches of Veterans Stadium back in Rolen’s day. This is a fan base that just rewrote Trea Turner’s Philly script with a standing ovation — leading Bowa to say: “The mentality is different here now.”
“So I would think,” he said, “that time has healed those wounds — because if you watched this guy play, he was a Philadelphia Phillie. I mean, he was a blue-collar player. This guy, he put his nose in the dirt and grinded and grinded and grinded, and never gave away at-bats.”
How we got here
You should know, before we continue, that Rolen politely declined comment for this story. However, he spoke about this topic in his Hall of Fame press conference in July. And he had plenty to say two decades ago, in a long conversation we had in the spring of 2002, that still sheds light on all of this today.
But with or without his perspective, it is jarring to look back at the end of his six-plus seasons in Philadelphia and wonder what could possibly have caused it to come to this.
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He was the Phillies’ second-round pick in 1993. He roared through their system, won a Rookie of the Year Award four years later at age 22, won three of his eight career Gold Glove Awards in Philadelphia and collected MVP votes in two of his first five full seasons.
He was baseball’s most spectacular defender at third base since Schmidt, who had retired about a decade earlier, so Rolen seemed positioned to be the centerpiece of the franchise for a generation. But trouble was lurking. By which we mean … those teams he played on were awful. As in 78 games under .500 over his first four full seasons, the second-worst record in the National League … which got his manager, Terry Francona, fired … and replaced by the fiery Bowa.
In 2001, Bowa’s first year as manager, the Phillies won 86 games and stayed in contention until late September. But Rolen and Bowa began to clash — first over Bowa’s high-octane managerial style and temperament, and then over a postgame quote that Rolen felt was directed at him.
In mid-June that year, as the Phillies were getting swept in a three-game series by a Devil Rays team on its way to losing 100 games, Bowa was quoted as saying, “The middle of our lineup is killing us.” The next day, Rolen stomped into the manager’s office to ask: Was that about me? And their relationship was never the same.
Bowa took ownership of those issues this week, saying: “I think that’s up to the manager, to make that right.”
“There’s some things I look back on, I could have probably handled Scotty a little bit different,” he said. “No question. … If I had really dug down deep into his personality, I could have probably done a better job of it.”
Bowa also believes, looking back on it now, that most of his clashes with Rolen stemmed from Rolen trying to do what team leaders do — and protect his teammates from a manager whose motor overheated, in front of the cameras and the world, after every mistake his team made.
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“With the exception of that comment that I made about ‘the middle of our lineup is killing us,’ I don’t regret too much,” Bowa said. “But there were a couple times where I would get the a– in the dugout. If we made a bad base-running mistake or a mental (mistake) … I used to go wacko. And I know that bothered him a lot. But other than that, I don’t think we got along that bad.”
The uncomfortable state of their relationship kept the keyboards clicking and the talk shows crackling back then. But that wasn’t even the main event, as Rolen’s connection with the organization deteriorated.
It was all the losing — and the Phillies’ meager payroll, the sixth-lowest in MLB in his final season — that was about to lead them to baseball divorce court.
So does that mean it was never about Larry Bowa? That Rolen never asked his bosses to get him out of town so he didn’t have to play for that bleepity-bleep Bowa anymore? By all accounts, that never happened.
Asked about the role that Rolen’s relationship with Bowa played, his longtime agent, Seth Levinson, told The Athletic: “It’s irrelevant, entirely irrelevant. Without the commitment from management, Scott justifiably believed that he would be playing his career for clubs that lost or didn’t have a chance to win a championship.”
So it was all about …
Giving fans the team they ‘deserved’
It was the winter leading up to the 2002 season. Scott Rolen was a year away from free agency. So if the Phillies were going to keep him around, it was then or never. The winner turned out to be … “never.”
The Phillies let Rolen know they were prepared to offer him one of the richest contracts in the history of the sport at the time — six years, $140 million. Rolen’s response wasn’t no. It was more like: Don’t even go there — unless you’re prepared to spend what it takes to compete.
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“I’m not happy I didn’t sign that contract,” he told me the next spring. “It doesn’t make me feel good that I turned down $140 million, and a chance to set my family and my family’s family and everyone else up for life. … That’s an insane amount of money. …
“I promise you I’m not trying to get more money,” he said at another point. “I’ve already told you I’m an idiot, and it’s well-documented that I am an idiot. But as idiotic as I am, I’m certainly not stupid enough to risk $140 million for (a chance to make) $145 million or $150 million. I’m not that stupid.”
So he was doing this, he said, for “the fans in the stands.”
“The fans in the stands in Philadelphia have a passion about them,” Rolen went on. “They’re dying to win. And if those fans don’t have that passion, they’re not in the stands. … There’s a reason our attendance last year didn’t reflect the team we had on the field. And the reason is that these fans are upset (with ownership), and they have every right to be.”
So what he was asking for, he said, was not money or a trade. It was for “the backing from ownership, to have that same commitment that they expect from the players. And they expect fans to come to the stadium. So why shouldn’t the players and the fans expect that same level of commitment from them?”
He knew the ever-skeptical citizens of Philadelphia might not take his message that way. But he insisted he was fighting for them, not himself.
“The only thing I can hang my hat on is what’s right and on principle,” he said in 2002. “If … by not signing a contract for that amount of money, it somehow gets some kind of point across and helps bring these people the kind of team Philadelphia wants and what they deserve as fans, I can live with that.”
Despite those words, his campaign to be everyone’s favorite Voice of the Fan didn’t get far. He has been viewed negatively ever since by a sizable chunk of the fan base, as a guy who was all about himself and just didn’t want to play in Philadelphia.
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At the press conference before his Hall of Fame induction in July, Rolen expressed regret about how it ended and how he was perceived — because of how appreciative he was of nearly all of his time as a Phillie.
“There was a three- (or) four-month period there,” he said, “that there was — I don’t know how you want to say it, whether it was a misunderstanding or not — (but) we weren’t on the same page. And unfortunately, it got a little public. I think we all wanted the same thing. And it didn’t come off that way necessarily.
“But my time in Philadelphia was fantastic,” he pivoted. “The relationships that I made in Philadelphia. … I learned to play the game there. There was a toughness there that you had to play with. It was a huge piece of my career going forward.”
Eventually, he was traded to St. Louis two days before the 2002 trade deadline — in an underwhelming deal that sent infielder Placido Polanco, pitcher Bud Smith and reliever Mike Timlin to Philadelphia. When Rolen was showered with love by Cardinals fans and responded by calling St. Louis a slice of “baseball heaven,” it was just one more slight that the diehards in Philly never forgot.
But looking back now, two decades down the baseball freeway, it still makes very little sense that the anti-Rolen bonfire was lit in Philadelphia in the first place — and even less that it’s still burning.
So now here we are, all these years later. And it’s time for them to meet again.
Welcome to Wall of Fame night
John Middleton didn’t even wait for the Hall of Fame election. The Phillies’ principal owner called Rolen last fall, before the Hall voters had spoken, and told him he thought it was time for Rolen to become a Phillies Wall of Famer.
Rolen had come back to Philadelphia once or twice since retiring in 2012, for a couple of Phillies-related occasions. But Middleton read the Hall of Fame tea leaves and realized it was time to kick open the door and welcome a “really important” figure back into the franchise’s good graces.
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A grateful Rolen accepted that gesture, and a Sept. 22 date was set. But from the moment the Rolen announcement was made in May, the intrigue began to mount. How would he be received?
Would the fans of Philadelphia do what they once did for Jayson Werth and call off the boo-fest when Werth returned for a 2008 World Series reunion? Or was Rolen somehow different? Forgiveness has never been one of Philadelphia’s favorite things. But was it finally time?
“I don’t think he’ll get booed, not anymore,” said Tyrone Johnson, co-host of 97.5 The Fanatic’s afternoon-drive talk show, “The Best Show Ever.” “But I also don’t think he’ll be cheered if that makes sense. It’s a weird thing with him. I think there’s still some resentment. So I think he’ll get cheered politely. But then there will be some silence.”
Well, that would be awkward. But as we’ve noted, nothing is impossible. So what exactly is that resentment about? Johnson says these fans don’t seem to remember how bad the Phillies were back then. They only remember Rolen as a guy who “abandoned the roster” just when it was on the cusp of welcoming that 2008 World Series nucleus to the big leagues.
Except that almost none of that is accurate. Jimmy Rollins debuted in 2000, so he’d arrived. But at the time Rolen turned down that contract, Chase Utley had just finished his first full season in A-ball. Cole Hamels was still in high school. Ryan Howard had played only 48 games of pro ball in the New York-Penn League. And Citizens Bank Park was just beginning to rise from the rubble across the parking lot from the Vet, still two years from opening.
So how was Rolen supposed to gaze into the future and see a World Series parade? The view of all those losing seasons — and his team’s $41 million payroll — was much clearer.
“There was a stadium that was on the way,” Rolen acknowledged in his July press conference. “So the question is, do I commit at that point — two, three years down the road from a stadium — and commit your whole career? Or do you see what free agency looks like? That was my decision at the time. And I understand that the Phillies needed to make a move.”
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But did that fit the definition of “abandoning” the roster, the city and its loyal fan base? Hmmm. Are you ready for a little irony?
There was the irony of how Rolen’s time in St. Louis ended for one thing — with another headstrong manager, Tony La Russa, clashing with Rolen and forcing the Cardinals to trade him to Toronto. St. Louis felt so “abandoned” by Rolen in that case that it continues to show him the love, and he wore a Cardinals cap on his Hall of Fame plaque.
And now get ready for an even wilder irony. Does anybody remember how Larry Bowa’s playing career ended in Philadelphia in January 1982? See if this sounds familiar. It ended because Bowa got wrapped up in an even uglier contract squabble — with the same ownership group — and essentially forced the Phillies to trade him to the Cubs. He even took a throw-in named Ryne Sandberg with him.
So … want to guess who brought up that surreal parallel? Yes, Bowa himself.
“I don’t want to open up this whole can of worms again. But it was the same thing,” Bowa said. “I said, ‘OK, then trade me.’ … So I look at Scott’s situation like, once the Phillies realized that they weren’t going to sign him, you can’t let him just walk and not get anybody.”
Bowa’s unhappy exit was four decades ago. Yet no one in Philadelphia views Larry Bowa as a traitor who abandoned a team that was two seasons away from going back to its second World Series in four years.
So Bowa knows that forgiveness can be as fickle as it is selective. And that’s one more reason he has spent the last few months trying to let Philadelphia know it’s time to forget the past and embrace Scott Rolen.
“I’ve tried to do that every time I do an interview,” Bowa said. “And it’s not fake or anything. I’ve always said I love the way this guy played.”
When Rolen’s Wall of Fame ceremony begins Friday night, Bowa will be standing on the same field, alongside a group of fellow Wall of Famers that will include Schmidt, Greg Luzinski, Jim Thome and John Kruk. A procession of former Rolen teammates will be there, as well. So will the scouting director who drafted him, Mike Arbuckle, and even the general manager who traded him, Ed Wade.
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It will be Schmidt, fittingly, who will step to the microphone and pass the Wall of Fame torch from one great Phillies third baseman to another. Then the Phillies will roll a video tribute.
Then, finally, it will be Scott Rolen’s turn, to address a ballpark full of fans who aren’t sure what to make of him, but can’t wait to hear what he now has to say to them. They can expect him to say something like this:
“There’s no bad blood between the Phillies and me or my family in any capacity,” Rolen said in July. “I mean, they’re honoring me on their Wall of Fame … and that’s a huge thing. I’ve spoken to John Middleton. And like I’ve said, I still have a bunch of friends in the organization that we keep in contact with. So my time there, I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.”
There is an alternate universe in which Rolen had signed that contract … and then spent the next decade playing in an infield with him at third, Rollins at short, Utley at second and Howard at first. It’s safe to say Phillies fans have contemplated that universe.
“That would have been a monster,” Bowa said. “It might have been the best infield ever in baseball. And you might have had three or four rings.”
It’s too late for anyone in Philadelphia to take the ride into that alternative universe. But it’s never too late to take a ride into what happens next. So what happens Friday? It’s a question that’s been hanging over Philadelphia all summer.
“I would really be disappointed if he didn’t get all the accolades I think he deserves,” Bowa said. “It’s just a different generation of fans now. And that’s why I’m hoping it’s a great night for him. I really am.”
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(Top image: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Getty; Patrick Smith, Focus On Sport, The Sporting News)
