Rollins comes home, but Phils win behind Franco's slam

They began to rise even before longtime Phillies public address announcer Dan Baker offered his introduction, and they remained on their feet for the better part of the next minute.

Jimmy Rollins twice stepped out of the batter's box and lifted his blue Los Angeles Dodgers batting helmet to thank the Citizens Bank Park crowd of 28,733 before the first at-bat of a 6-2 Phillies win Tuesday night. A standing ovation lasting about 45 seconds greeted the Phillies' all-time hits leader for his first game as a visitor.

Rollins would have rather the night ended in a Dodgers win, but Maikel Franco ensured the opposite. The 22-year-old third baseman's seventh-inning grand slam off Joel Peralta - the first of his budding career - proved the difference in the Phillies' 13th win in their 16 games since the all-star break.

For as much as Rollins downplayed the significance of his return - "It wasn't anything I circled on my calendar," he insisted a couple of hours before the game - the trademark grin across his face indicated otherwise. The applause extended to both dugouts and his former teammates in the field, who clapped into their mitts as they readied for the game's first pitch. A video tribute preceded the second inning.

"It was cool. It was greatly appreciated," said Rollins, who singled, doubled, and scored a run in the game.

"It went longer than I thought. I came out, [they] clapped, I nodded, acknowledged them, got in the box and they just kept going. I was like, 'Jeez. We do have a game to play.' But it was a great moment for them to show their appreciation, and I'm glad it was that way."

Franco became the first Phillies rookie to hit a grand slam since Ryan Howard in September 2005. The only Phillies rookie since 1930 to finish with at least a .281 batting average, .339 on-base percentage and .441 slugging percentage - Franco's statistics after Tuesday - was Dick Allen in 1964.

Ken Giles recorded his first four-out save to cap the win.

"My energy [was so] high at that time for my first big-league grand slam," Franco said. "That was amazing."

For Rollins, the two-hit effort improved his season average to a mere .219, but he is .341 over his last 11 games. Despite striking out twice Tuesday, he has seven hits in his 20 at-bats against the Phillies.

He committed his ninth fielding error of the season in the fifth inning when he bobbled a Carlos Ruiz ground ball, but it did not prove costly.

A Dodgers off day ahead the series opener afforded Rollins an extra day at his South Jersey home, where his wife, Johari, and two daughters, 3-year-old Camryn and 16-month old Logan, have been since the all-star break. The former MVP said he wasn't noticed around town Monday - he prefers it that way - not even at the airport after his red-eye flight from Los Angeles landed early in the morning.

Rollins discovered Tuesday that the walk from the players' parking lot to the visiting clubhouse is a bit longer than the short stroll to which he was accustomed. He joked that he was glad television cameras were stationed outside so he knew where to enter.

"I think a lot of people around me, I know for sure, they've been excited and are excited," Rollins, 36, said before the game. "My phone has just been going off all day. I had to tell a couple of people to stop texting me so much.

"At the end of the day, it's another baseball game. We're in the thick of things, and it's about winning and losing, not about just me coming back to Philadelphia. We have games to win and games to play."

Tuesday's result snapped the Dodgers' four-game winning streak. Rollins stepped to the plate in the eighth inning of a three-run game, a chance to at least narrow Los Angeles' deficit with runners on second and third and two outs. Giles entered and threw three consecutive sliders to his former teammate. He followed with five fastballs, the last a full-count, 100 m.p.h. heater down in the zone that caught Rollins looking.

"I talked to Jimmy before the game," Phillies interim manager Pete Mackanin said. "I said, 'Jimmy, I don't care if you get eight hits, just as long as we win all three games.'

"He meant a lot to us."