Jimmy Rollins: Fifteen years with one shortstop

In case you missed it, I wrote my first story for Sports Illustrated Friday, about the symbolism of Jimmy Rollins being the first homegrown Phillies star to leave town.

One story wasn’t enough for me to get it all out of my system, so here’s a more personal take on what it’s been like to follow Rollins all these years.

Rollins’ first full season in the Major Leagues was in 2001.

I was 14 that summer, and spent eight weeks at an overnight camp with no phone service or internet access. In the days before smartphones and iPads, going to camp every year was like living in an isolated bubble.

My main contact with the outside world was via written letter. My parents would send me packages every few days with old newspapers so I could keep up with Phillies results a few days behind the rest of the world. My friends and I would cut clippings and photos to hang on the bunk walls over our beds.

So I haven’t been following Rollins’ career quite since the Stone Age, it just feels like it.

Rollins was the Phillies’ starting shortstop for my four years of high school, and had established himself as a star by the time I went to college in August 2005.

I went off to Lehigh barely knowing a soul. But on my very first day, I met a fellow Phillies fan named Scott and we quickly became friends. Later that week, we were watching a game in my room when we heard a knock on the door:

“Hi, I’m Joe. I don’t have a TV in my room, and I heard you guys watching the Phillies game from the hallway. Do you mind if I come in?”

Sure, Joe, come on in.

The three of us started watching games together, as the Phillies stayed in the playoff hunt until the final day of the season. Rollins got a hit every single night, cobbling together a 36-game hitting streak to finish the year.

By the time September ended, I had plenty of friends on campus, picked a fraternity I wanted to join and was completely settled into a happy college life.

So I wouldn’t say I owe all my college friends to Jimmy Rollins’ hit streak, but it didn’t hurt.

Oh, and Scott and Joe? Well 2015 will be our 10th straight year with Phillies season tickets together.

We have the Sunday plan, which put us in Citizens Bank Park on September 30, 2007, when the Phillies chased down the Mets on the final day of the season to win the division— the day Rollins ripped his 20th triple to cement his MVP campaign.

Jimmy Rollins played in 2,090 games for the Phillies. I don’t know how many of them I actually saw (some of them occurred while I was at summer camp, after all) but I saw more than I missed. I’ve spent more time watching Rollins play baseball than I’ve spent watching any other athlete play anything.

I’ve gone to see him play in person at the Vet and the Bank, in New York and DC, at Spring Training and in the World Series. I’ve played entire 162-game seasons on Xbox with Rollins as my shortstop. He’s just always been a constant. For so much of my life as an obsessive baseball fan, Rollins has been the shortstop.

When you follow sports, you tend to think about the significant moments. But a baseball season is a long slog filled with many insignificant moments— games that are here today and then gone forever. So many of Rollins’ 2,000+ games are irrelevant to most people. But they all matter to somebody for some reason. We’ve changed and grown over a decade and a half, and every Phillies fan has their own personal Rollins story.

I know that when I look back at my life watching the Phillies, so many of the moments that matter to me involved J-Roll.

The first time I got a media credential for a Phillies game was on Mother’s Day in 2007, toward the beginning of my trip to all 30 MLB stadiums in one summer. Rollins happened to be the player chosen by the team to present his own mom, Gigi, with flowers in a pregame ceremony. I stood on the field and took pictures, thinking, “Boy, maybe I could really cover baseball professionally someday.”

In the summer of 2008 I had an internship in Center City. One Thursday I left work early for an afternoon game. My whole life the Phillies had billed weekday afternoon games as “Businessperson Specials” and I texted my friends that it was my first time going as an actual businessperson.

I wasn’t really. I was a dumb intern. But I was so excited to go from work straight to the ballpark with my button down shirt tucked into my khakis and my laptop bag over my shoulder. I sat by myself in right field and watched Cole Hamels throw a shutout against the Reds. It happened to be the game when Rollins famously got pulled by Charlie Manuel for failing to run out a pop up.

The list goes on and on. Either Rollins found a way to do something memorable in the games I carry with me as personal milestones, or I just subconsciously found a way to make whatever he did seem memorable.

But after 15 years of watching the same player, I can measure time periods of my life around his.

In December 2011, when Rollins signed his contract extension, I was living in Richmond and watched the press conference on my computer at work.

In June 2014, when Rollins broke Mike Schmidt’s all-time franchise hit record, I was living in Chicago and watched the game on my phone in a taxi.

Earlier this month, I first found out about the trade to the Dodgers while catching a train from my home in Hoboken to my office in New York.

Three totally different chapters in my life: one shortstop.

So six weeks into my new job as a social media producer at Sports Illustrated, I wrote my first story for the website. And of course I wrote about Rollins.

Rollins took out an ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer Saturday. Had he done it in 2001, I would have hung it up on the bunk wall. In 2014 I first read it on Twitter. One thing Rollins wrote was, “I’ve spent nearly half my life growing up in front of all of you.”

And it’s weird because I don’t really know Jimmy Rollins, but it feels like I’ve grown up along with him.

Because when Rollins first came into my life, I was a kid cutting out newspaper clippings, dreaming about someday getting to write about the Phillies. And by the time his Phillies career ended, I was 27 with two journalism degrees and a job at SI.

I packed and moved all my belongings from my childhood home, to my college campus, to five different apartments in three different states, but I never had to change shortstops.

So thanks for the memories, Jimmy. I have lots of them.

Follow @mitchgoldich