Jimmy Rollins

ATLANTA - Most of his Phillies teammates had exited through the rear door in the visiting clubhouse at Turner Field for pregame stretching and batting practice when Jimmy Rollins grabbed his last belongings and headed that way, too. The starting lineup was posted on the door. "I hadn't even looked," Rollins said to a small group of reporters as he walked out. "I haven't made it past my locker. " Even though Ryan Howard and Chase Utley were in the middle of the lineup, unlike last year on Opening Day, Rollins' name was not at the top of the batting order.

ATLANTA - Jimmy Rollins dashed to meet his teammates for stretching at 5 p.m. Monday and almost forgot his red Phillies hat before his 13th straight opening day as the team's shortstop. In 10 of those seasons, Rollins was the first Phillies player to hit. This time, the lineup was different. "Actually," Rollins said, "I haven't even looked" at it. Rollins knew, though. He batted second for the first time in nearly nine years. His leadoff spot belonged to Ben Revere. The move was somewhat surprising.

FIRST, Shane Victorino grounded out to end the 2009 World Series, and then Ryan Howard was caught looking at a third strike to conclude the 2010 National League Championship Series. In 2011, Howard's left Achilles' snapped and he collapsed after hitting a grounder for the final out of the National League Division Series at Citizens Bank Park. The 2012 season ended with the Phillies missing out on the playoffs altogether, and with unofficial team spokesman Jimmy Rollins saying things would have been different had everyone been healthy.

SOMEBODY cue up Kenny Rogers' "Through The Years," while hoping the most successful era of Phillies baseball isn't quite over: 2007 Record: Went 89-73 and won the National League East for the first time since 1993. Synopsis: The season started with Jimmy Rollins' proclamation that the Phillies were the team to beat and closed with Rollins going 2-for-3 with a triple and two stolen bases as the Phils won the division on the final day of the season. Key additions: Jayson Werth, Greg Dobbs, Chad Durbin, J.C. Romero, Tadahito Iguchi, Kyle Lohse.

It's almost too easy. Thirty years after the Wheeze Kids won the National League pennant, another bunch of aging Phillies will try to defy time and recapture recent glory. What a perfect angle for opening day, right? Well, no. The '83 Phillies really were an assemblage of last-legs superstars: Pete Rose was 42. Tony Perez was 41. Joe Morgan was 39. They won 90 games that year. The oldest of this season's "old" Phillies regulars is 36-year-old Michael Young. Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins are 34, fully eight years younger than Rose was. Ryan Howard is 33, which is the same age Mike Schmidt was when he hit 40 home runs and finished third in the 1983 MVP voting.

It's no joke: The Phillies are opening on April 1 this year. It will be the third time the season starts on April Fools' Day, and since that history is mostly recent, it's actually pretty good. Plus, because it's April 1, you certainly can prank the ones you love. First some history, then some foolishness to try at home: April 1, 2011, Phillies' home opener vs. Astros It was the baseball gods playing a prank. It had to be. The Phillies came into 2011 with great promise: The team, two years removed from a World Series win, shockingly reacquired Cliff Lee as a free agent in the offseason.

As the Phillies made their unofficial 2013 Citizens Bank Park debut to wind down their exhibition schedule, they were faced with one burning question still to answer. Who is Charlie Manuel's leadoff man - Ben Revere or Jimmy Rollins - for Monday night's season opener in Atlanta against the Braves? Revere, in his first appearance in South Philadelphia, got the call at the top of the order in Friday night's exhibition game against the Toronto Blue Jays and went 0 for 4 in the Phillies' 1-0 loss before a crowd of 32,164 on a breezy, chilly night.

The Phillies are due for a pleasant surprise, and Domonic Brown is the perfect candidate. For a few years now, all the surprises have been negative: Chase Utley's months of inaction because of knee trouble, Ryan Howard's Achilles popping, Carlos Ruiz's suspension, Roy Halladay's sudden nosedive. So why not something good for a change? It would be very Philadelphia to retort that 2008 happened too recently for the Phillies to be due anything but continued penance. Championships come once a century around here, franchise-changing players maybe once a generation.

The recollection of playing on Phillies teams that galvanized Philadelphia still gives Ryan Madson chills. Nostalgia is a powerful elixir. Listening to former Phillies reminisce about nights at Citizens Bank Park offers a glimpse into what the kingdom was not long ago - and how it seemed to change so quickly. "What fueled us was the fact that in 2007 we kind of got to the playoffs and didn't go anywhere," Madson said from the Los Angeles Angels' spring training clubhouse in Tempe, Ariz.