11:00 PM Eastern

Everyone is more than nice at their introductory press conference. They all say the right things, they’re patient, answer all the questions, and maybe even crack a joke or two. But Scott Rolen brought it all and then some.

It’s dangerous to take too much from that first gathering with a new city’s media, hell, Albert Belle said he was going to be gracious and do his best to work with the press when he joined the White Sox, and it only took about half an hour for that promise to go WAY off the rails. Barry Bonds was happy and approachable when he first went to the Giants, too.

But neither of them brought a stand-up act. Rolen was cracking wise from the get-go, ragging on J.P. Ricciardi for not wearing a tie, taking a shot at John Gibbons’ accent, about his shoulder problems (“I can’t BELIEVE I passed my physical”) and the playing surface at Rogers Centre (“You guys have turf??”). What got me, though, was that he maintained his sense of humour when he was asked about his departure from St. Louis and his relationship with Tony LaRussa. He stayed happy when he talked about the bridge he burned with Larry Bowa in Philly, and when he was asked about the danger in moving from the AL to the NL (“seems as though I’m destined to fail…..that’s not my plan.”). That’s not something one often sees. A touchy subject comes up, and a lot of the time the smile fades.

I had heard from people in St. Louis that Rolen is a pleasure to deal with, and it really appeared to be confirmed in the 45 minutes or so we all spent with him. He even let me dig myself out of the hole I made when I messed up his age a few times (“You’re 35……ummm, gonna be 35…….ummm, 35 when the contract’s up” “There you go!”). Not everyone would have been so gracious. Of course, that may all change after a couple of weeks of half a dozen people sticking a microphone in his face every day once we all get to Dunedin, but his history seems to suggest it won’t.

Of course, most of you could care less about how a player is with the media, but it does make life a lot easier when the people you’re trying to talk to are at the very least co-operative. When you get a guy who’s more than that – a John McDonald, a Lyle Overbay, a Reed Johnson, a Jason Frasor, a David Eckstein, just to name a few, well, that makes going to work a lot more fun. And Rolen seems like a fun guy. He let his three year-old daughter pick his uniform number (“Firty-fwee”), and he says his family will be coming to Toronto a lot, led by his parents in their RV, and they’ll “storm this place and tear a lot of stuff up.” So batten down the hatches, the Rolens are coming.

As far as the more important stuff – you know, the baseball, Rolen again said all the right things. He was told by the doctors that his physical was completely normal, and said it was the first time in years that’s happened. He said that he’s doing all his workouts, including hitting and fielding, with no restrictions at all, and that he’d be fine to start the first game of Spring Training if John Gibbons was inclined to put him in the line-up that early.

We’ll have to watch his hands. Rolen said the reason that his power dried up last year (just 8 homers for a guy who had hit 25 or more six times) was that the range of motion in his left shoulder was severely limited. He couldn’t get his hands back far enough to “load up” his bat, and then he couldn’t get his hands away from his body when it came time to swing. If he’s really fine, then we should be able to tell just from his hands.

Lastly, he also said a couple of other things that made an impression on me. He talked about accountability and about leadership. I asked him if he’s the kind of guy who would go up to a teammate and say something to him if something needed to be said, and he gave the usual answer of “not in the first few days at Dunedin”, then talked about having to earn respect in the clubhouse. It was the nice, modest answer, like Scott Rolen doesn’t know he comes into the clubhouse and demands instant respect. This guy was on an easy track to Cooperstown before the shoulder started giving him problems. But what he said next struck a chord. Rolen followed up the textbook “earn respect” thing by saying that “people that believe they’re given respect, I don’t think that they hold weight when they do open their mouths.”

Comments are welcome, as always, and the e-mail address remains wilner590@hotmail.com. There’s going to be a mailbag coming soon!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.