PREFERS TEMPLE'S OFFENSE TO PRINCETON'S
UPDATE
As it turned out, the video that Jimmy Rollins taped was not played on the stadium video board, but on television. Which meant that the fans were treated to Rollins' appearance without a warmup.
When the lineups were announced before the game, there was a mix of boos and cheers.
When Rollins took the field before the game, there was pretty much silence.
When Rollins successfully fielded a ground ball in the top of the first, there were some boos.
When Rollins came to the plate in the first inning, the noise was pretty loud and, again, pretty evenly split between boos and cheers. When Rollins lined out to right field, there were boos again.
In all, a pretty big shrug.
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Jimmy Rollins and the Phillies have cooked up a little surprise for the fans tonight at Citizens Bank Park. It is a video message from Rollins to the fans in the wake of his comments last week calling them "front-runners," and the resulting firestorm.
Rollins taped it in the dugout before batting practice.
"They came up and asked me if I would do it," Rollins said. "At first, I was like, 'That's pretty cheesy.' But the producer wanted to do it so I was like, 'All right, sure, whatever. I'll go along with it.' "
Asked if it was an apology, Rollins said it was not. He said, "It was, 'What do you think is going to be the reaction to your first at-bat?' "
His response, paraphrased, was apparently something on the order of: everybody has a right to their opinion, everybody has a right to cheer or boo, but in the end, everybody just wants the team to win.
Or something.
Speaking later to reporters, Rollins was unrepentant. Asked if he regretted the incident, he said, "No, not at all."
And he again talked about how booing has, in the past, affected some of his teammates to the point where "they're halfway defeated before they get up there" to the plate.
He also added that potential free agents have come up to him in the past and asked about the Philadelphia fans and said things, "Most of 'em, you can't repeat." Rollins said that players have said they don't want to put their families into this kind of situation, "That's just the truth."
That should get some play.
More later.
