Sam Donnellon: Rollins embraces role of being a role model

CLEARWATER, Fla. - He hears the voices now. Maybe they were there before, maybe not. Jimmy Rollins isn't quite sure. He knows only that when he walks down the foul line that leads from the Phillies' spring training clubhouse to the dugout at Bright House Field, the hushed voices of fathers speaking to their sons breaks through, finds his ears.

"There goes Jimmy Rollins," he hears them say. "You watch him."

He is 33 now, with a contract that should keep him a Phillie until he is 36. He has been with this team, his only team, since he played a few games when he was 21. We have seen him go from much hair to no hair. We have seen his every growth, his every setback. We have seen him punish teams for underestimating him, and we have seen him punished for underestimating the rules of his own. We have squirmed at his boasts and exalted at their deliverance. We have seen him fail miserably and we have seen him succeed spectacularly.

He has survived and thrived through three Phillies eras, really, from the rebuilding years of Ed Wade's tenure to the successes of Pat Gillick's, to the patchwork maintenance of Rubern Amaro Jr.'s regime.

"They're all here, too," he chuckled in the locker room yesterday. "They all came back home."

This is his home, will be his home. He made that clear this offseason when he spurned an extra year and a little extra dough from Milwaukee to stay, even after posturing that he wanted years from some team more than he wanted their last dollar. Turns out he wanted neither. Turns out, he couldn't tear himself away from us.

Maybe that's why fathers are telling their sons to watch him now.

Or maybe it's why he's finally hearing it.

"You hear the stories about the old-time ballplayers, about people going to watch the greats of baseball and saying to their kids, 'There goes Willie Mays. There goes such and such,' " he said. "And obviously I know some history of the game. And now, hearing that about me - it's kind of strange. I mean it's cool, you're like, 'Man, this is great.' Like when I was home growing up, it was like, 'There goes Rickey Henderson.' I was like, 'I've got to watch Rickey.' And my Dad was like, 'There goes Rickey Henderson.'

"So now you're like, 'He just told his kid to watch me!' Or the kid comes up and is like, 'Dad, there's Jimmy Rollins!' And you're like, 'Man, this is great.' I mean, it may have happened before. But I never heard it."

I told him he was an idol now.

"I'm not an idol," he said.

OK, an icon.

"I don't know."

Here's what he does know. He can no longer separate Jimmy the player from Jimmy the person. J-Roll has been rolled into James Calvin Rollins, the two coexisting more seamlessly than in years past. There is still swagger, and there is still that cat-and-mouse courtship with the media. But he gets the role-model thing now, he said, "big time."

"I remember growing up and hearing Charles Barkley say, 'I'm not a role model,' '' he said. "And he's 100 percent correct and he's 100 percent wrong at the same time.

"Whether you like it or not, you are being watched. Parents will come and say, 'My son, he plays shortstop and he tries to be just like you.' Well, how the heck is that going to happen? But when I was that age I was trying to be exactly like Rickey Henderson. I'm watching him play and I was in his brain. I'd be at home, one foot on the couch, and lead off like him. So I can understand it. But it's hard to comprehend it now that I'm an adult."

Here's what he does comprehend: That how Jimmy acts, what J-Roll does, can be emulated.

Will be emulated.

"I was the oldest brother," he said. "So growing up I was always the one who had to be the role model. And it's easy when it's your family.

"But you have other people . . . I watched Rickey Henderson. It really didn't extend beyond the baseball field. I admired him as a person on the baseball field, but if he went and did something off the baseball field, I wasn't going to do the same thing because Rickey did it. I had enough sense about myself, but some kids don't. Especially if they're raised in a society where they don't have a role model. And if you're that guy and they see you out there? Or hear about you doing something? Then it's OK to do that.

"So yeah, you're 100 percent correct about being a role model because you're not, really. But yeah, you're 100 percent wrong because you are."