The impact of bat on ball creates a sharp sound, like a tree branch breaking in a forest of plastic seats. For a veteran shortstop, it's the equivalent of Pavlov's bell, a signal that causes instinct to take over. Everything after it is reaction, a conditioned response that starts on the basepaths of suburban Oakland and stretches to big league batting practices like the one in progress now.
On a patch of dirt between second and third, the shortstop sprints into motion, bounding after a ball skipping across the lake of open grass. He digs a cleat into the ground and launches his body into the air, twisting his core and cocking his arm in one smooth motion. Then he falls away, Jordan after the jump shot, backpedaling toward the chalk line, tracking the arc of the ball as it arrives at its target.
That's when Jimmy Rollins cracks satisfied grin and allows his momentum to knock him backward onto the turf. For a few moments he is alone, lying on the outfield grass, staring at a late-summer sky, floating in a moment that none of us will ever know. Three hours before another first pitch, the world beeps and rolls and chatters away.
All around him, the speakers sing: "Wild thing . . . I think I love you."
He is bald now, the braids of his youth replaced by a cueball head that holds his cap like a storefront window bust. At 32, he is the most veteran fixture on the town's most successful team, and one of the most accomplished offensive and defensive shortstops in the history of major league baseball. Eleven years after he first arrived in Philadelphia, Jimmy Rollins' career has completed an arc that few Philadelphia athletes ever experience. When he first arrived, he was billed as The Future. As he made his mark, he developed into The Present. And now, a decade-plus after it all began, Rollins is staring down a potential existence as The Past.
