Rolen enters the Hall of Fame's hot corner

The third baseman won over the voters with his two-way play.

Until Tuesday there were only 17 third basemen in baseball’s Hall of Fame, fewest of any position with a glove. There’a reason. It’s too hard.

A catcher doesn’t have to hit. Nor does every centerfielder, particularly when run prevention is such a mantra (we used to just call it defense). A first baseman is hardly ever judged on his arm. But a third baseman not only needs accceptable tools, he must drive in runs, preferably with home runs, and make anatomically improbable plays, with his bare hand or his chest or whatever’s available. He also has to absorb the sprains and strains and bruises without complaint. He’s the cowboy, and the game he played is the bull.

Scott Rolen joined Mike Schmidt, Chipper Jones, George Brett, Wade Boggs, Pie Traynor, Brooks Robinson, Eddie Mathews and others in the hottest, most leathery corner of Cooperstown. It was his sixth year on the ballot. The Baseball Writers Association of America warmed up to him, after it gave him 10.8 percent in his first try. You need 75, and Rolen got 76.3.

The amateur pharmacologists on the panel backhanded Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez again, so the field was thinned out for Rolen, but his plaque will be the same size as Babe Ruth’s.

There will be detractors, since Rolen never led his league in any significant category. He only had five seasons of 150 games played, out of 17, and he hit over .300 only once, and he got MVP votes in only five seasons.

But he also had three 30-homer seasons and topped 100 RBI five times, and as OPS (on-base percentage, plus slugging) became the coin of the realm, Rolen’s esteem rose. He wound up with an .855 OPS for his career, which is higher than Reggie Jackson’s or Carl Yastrzemski’s.

Rolen and his son Finn were sitting in the car when he first made the ballot in 2018, getting ready for Finn’s basketball practice. They learned Rolen surpassed the five percent threshold to stay on the ballot. “I won,” he told Finn.

When he actually did win, it was because the voters paid attention to both halves of the inning. Rolen was a stunning third baseman when he broke in at 21 and he was still pretty good when he retired at 37. He won eight Gold Gloves and, when his Cardinals won the National League pennant in 2004, he had 30 runs saved, according to Fangraphs. He was 6-foot-4 and grew to 240 pounds, yet his feet were nimble enough to earn a basketball scholarship offer to Georgia.

Two-way players like Rolen should pass through Cooperstown’s portal more often, especially when they have an impact on teammates. “They say WWJD, for what What Would Jesus Do?’” said Jonny Gomes, “but here (in Philadelphia) it’s What Would Scott Do? He plays the game exactly the way it should be played.”

Rolen was quickly indoctrinated. In his first spring training, he was told to get his field and cage work done before the veterans showed up. “Be there at 6,” barked John Vukovich, a former third baseman and, if they ever let coaches into the Hall of Fame, will be a first-ballot cinch. Vukovich did for Rolen what he would later do for Chase Utley in Philadelphia. He tore him down and reassembled him.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Rolen said Tuesday, wearing an “E-5” cap at his home in Bloomington, Ind, an hour and a half from his hometown of Jasper. “Vuke was a nasty man, had a hard way about him, but that’s what we loved about him. He taught me how to work, taught me defensive fundamentals. He beat me up but he took an interest in me. That’s the reason my learning curve was so fast.

“And then I’d run past him when I was done and I’d say, ‘Thank you, John!’ He would tell me to get the hell out of there.”

In March of 2007 Vukovich died of a brain tumor. He was still a Phillies coach. Rolen took a private plane from Cardinals spring training, in Florida, for the funeral in south Jersey.

But Rolen didn’t see the same commitment on the Phillies’ executive floors, and after four consecutive losing seasons and with free agency in sight, he turned down a seven-year, $90 million contract that, with incentives, could have totaled $140 million over 10 years, a bonanza at the time. Rolen wanted more than that, namely better teammates, and he was tired of the barbs from manager Larry Bowa. Rolen spoke out and Phillies’ fans, who thrive on the narrative of their toughness, got their feelings hurt.

The Phillies traded Rolen to St. Louis during the 2001 season and Rolen was getting booed upon his returns to Philadelphia 10 years later, after the team had already won a World Series. They weren’t soothed when Rolen referred to his new destination as “baseball heaven,” nor when he agreed to a eight-year, $90 million deal.

The Rolen trade was not why the Phillies eventually won. All they got back were reliever Mike Timlin, starting pitcher Bud Smith and infielder Placido Polanco. Rolen squeezed onto a lineup card with Albert Pujols, Larry Walker and Jim Edmonds, and the Cardinals became October fixtures, and the Cardinals won 105 games. Rolen slammed 34 home runs, drove in 124 runs and had an OPS of 1.007. Yet the Cardinals were blindsided by destiny in the World Series and got swept by the Red Sox.

“I told my wife that I didn’t think I’d ever win a championship after that,” Rolen said. Two years later, with David Eckstein riding the wave at shortstop, a less imposing St. Louis team knocked off the Mets and then beat Detroit in a 5-game Series.

Rolen hit .421 in that Series despite an ailing shoulder that, he thought, deserved surgery. The Cardinals didn’t see it that way, and manager Tony La Russa didn’t start him in two postseason games.

“We butted heads,” Rolen said. Two years later he was traded to Toronto for Troy Glaus, and it seemed he was on an irrevocable career slide. But Cincinnati, close to home, traded for Rolen in 2009. At 35, Rolen won that eighth Gold Glove in 2010, and had an .854 OPS and was the gray eminence of a team that won the N.L. Central, although it was swept in the Division Series by the Phillies.

It’s possible to be demanding and humble simultaneously. “There was never a point in my life that I thought I’d be a Hall of Fame player,” he said. “I never thought I’d be drafted. Never thought I’d play in the big leagues. This is kind of over the top.

“We’ve got our whole family over here tonight and I promised everyone I’d cook some great steaks no matter what. Then when it happened, I had to turn over the tongs to my brother. That’s a good thing.”

Let others argue the merits of rare vs. well done.

(30)

“