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Returning Rollins speaks the truth on Sandberg

Before the Phillies threw open the gates and granted him his requested release, freeing him to play for a contending team, Jimmy Rollins delivered a dose of reality to Ruben Amaro Jr. that in time Amaro probably tired of hearing.

Jimmy Rollins meets the media before his game against the Phillies. (Steven M. Falk/Staff Photographer)
Jimmy Rollins meets the media before his game against the Phillies. (Steven M. Falk/Staff Photographer)Read more

Before the Phillies threw open the gates and granted him his requested release, freeing him to play for a contending team, Jimmy Rollins delivered a dose of reality to Ruben Amaro Jr. that in time Amaro probably tired of hearing.

Over his 15 seasons with the Phillies, for all the times he coasted out of the batter's box or arrived late to the ballpark or just let his intrinsic swagger get the better of him, Rollins still came away with the highest respect for his second and third managers in the majors: Larry Bowa and Charlie Manuel. Those men would be on opposite poles of any personality spectrum - Bowa, combustible and edgy; Manuel, avuncular and folksy - yet Rollins developed into the Phillies' greatest shortstop with each as an influence, a mentor, a confidant.

So, when he told Amaro after last season that Ryne Sandberg needed to improve his communication skills in the clubhouse, that the awkward silences and out-of-the-blue decisions left too many players distrustful of their manager, it should have sounded an alarm for Amaro.

"It was a rough place," Rollins said before the Phillies' 6-2 victory Tuesday, his first game at Citizens Bank Park since they traded him to the Dodgers in December, and he returned with the same willingness to speak the truth that he wielded here.

He was the first domino to go down when the franchise finally began to rebuild, and the Phillies were always going to be near the floor of the National League East this season, if not lying facedown on it. But in light of their 16-17 record under interim manager Pete Mackanin, everyone can see that they didn't have to be as bad as they were before Sandberg resigned on June 26.

When asked Tuesday what his reaction was to Sandberg's leaping for the nearest lifeboat when the Phillies were 26-48, Rollins said, "It was unfortunate."

He let those three words linger for several seconds, the silence as revealing as his sentence, until someone coaxed a deeper explanation from him.

"It isn't just about the X's and O's and executing the game plan," he said. "You have to manage the players. Manage the game during the game time, but in the meantime, you have to manage the players. That's something I spoke with Ruben about before I got traded, and I know he said that was something he was going to mention to Ryne. Hopefully, that was a tip, but obviously whatever happened over here, he took it upon himself to say he didn't really want to be a part of it anymore."

Rollins' distaste for Sandberg's managing methods dates to spring training 2014, when Sandberg benched him for three straight games after Rollins offered a glib "Who cares?" to a reporter who had asked him about a batting slump. The opportunity was there for Sandberg to send a message to one of the Phillies' most accomplished veterans and, in turn, to the entire team. Except he botched it. He never discussed the decision with Rollins until the punishment was obvious to the press and public, as if Sandberg's status as a Hall of Fame second baseman afforded him respect that, as a novice major-league manager, he had not yet earned.

That dynamic wouldn't have made sense in an earlier era of baseball, when the average manager had real power, before he had to be a horse whisperer to athletes who in many instances make millions of dollars more than he does. Sandberg was admittedly an old-school guy, but if his style and personal history were effective tools during his six years as a minor-league manager, with players desperate to get to the majors, they were useless to him here.

"We had him for a year [as a coach] at third base," Rollins said. "We knew obviously that he was very quiet, and as a manager, you need to be more open because you deal with so many personalities. . . .

"When you're able to talk things through, you can fix those rough patches or even not even have them. It just didn't quite work out that way."

In essence, Rollins painted a picture of Sandberg as a manager who expected players to comply with what he said or did, if he said anything to them at all, merely because he was Ryne Sandberg.

Ryan Howard's stretch on the bench last season, Cody Asche's relocation from third base to left field, players mysteriously pulled from games - Sandberg barely bothered to explain any of these moves, and his reticence chipped away at the players' confidence in him.

It doesn't seem coincidental that the Phillies have been a sharper, more competent club since Mackanin took over. "He's the exact opposite," Rollins said.

Amaro was in Trenton on Tuesday, watching Chase Utley in a double-A rehab assignment and some of the prospects whom the Phillies acquired in the Cole Hamels trade, and was unavailable for comment, according to a team spokesman.

It's likely that Sandberg was doomed to be a lame duck, that by resigning he hastened an exit that was inevitable come early October anyway. Maybe Amaro did exactly what Rollins recommended and urged Sandberg to open up, and maybe Sandberg failed the test.

Either way, it would have been nice over those first 74 games to get a more accurate idea of who these Phillies really were, because Jimmy Rollins already had Ryne Sandberg pegged.

@MikeSielski