CLEARWATER, Fla. – Jimmy Rollins couldn’t help himself; as the other members of Team USA began trickling into the clubhouse at Bright House Field for their first workout together in advance of the World Baseball Classic, he laid low, sitting with Shane Victorino, his teammate on the Phillies. The surroundings were familiar – this is Philadelphia’s winter headquarters, after all – but the feelings were not.
Especially when David Wright entered the room.
Now, understand, Rollins doesn’t hate Wright, and Wright doesn’t hate Rollins. Quite the contrary. This is what Wright says about the man who won an MVP trophy two years ago and a World Series ring last October: “If you don’t like the way Jimmy Rollins plays baseball, then you don’t like baseball, period.”
But Rollins is a Phillie. And Wright is a Met. And while Team USA manager Davey Johnson might have co-opted, for the time being, the phrase that the two teams have played ping-pong with across the past few years – and Johnson did it again yesterday, barking, “We’re the team to beat in this thing” with very little prompting – the Mets-Phillies rivalry is out there at all times, on the field and on the record.
“It takes a little while to adjust,” Rollins admitted a little later. “You spend all your time wanting to beat each other, it’s hard to just flip a switch and realize that you’re teammates, all on the same side now.”
This is when Henry Kissinger arrived, to set everyone’s mind, and nerves, at ease. That’s the name Rollins gave Derek Jeter, anyway; it was when Jeter arrived in the clubhouse, all ease and cool and general bonhomie, that he walked over to Rollins and laughed about the way three of Team USA’s lockers had been arranged.
Wright on one side. Rollins on another side. Jeter in the middle.
“That,” Rollins said, laughing, “is why you’re the captain.”
And here is where this collection of All-Stars with different agendas and different accomplishments took their first baby steps toward being a team, baseball’s version of Redeem Team, a collection of talent whose annual income soars into nine figures but whose collective legacy, to date, is a second-round ouster at the hands of Mexico three years ago in the inaugural WBC.
All that was lacking was the kind of outrage that always accompanies unexpected international losses for USA Basketball, because the WBC hasn’t exactly captured the American imagination the way it has in, say, Japan. Dustin Pedroia mentioned how quickly he knew that Daisuke Matsuzaka would fit into the Red Sox clubhouse when Dice-K started breaking chops about that 2006 WBC, won by Japan, the event that introduced him to the world.
The truth, for now and for the foreseeable future, is that baseball remains like politics in the U.S.: local, local, local. A U.S. win in this event would be greeted with a smile, a loss with a shrug, and the safe return of all players to their respective teams with a long sigh of relief.
The players insist it’s different for them. “Once you put on a uniform with ‘USA’ on the front, you feel something,” Jeter, a returnee from ’06, said.
And the surreal realities will dissolve, too. Wright was asked which was a more potentially odd sensation, sharing the left side of the infield with Rollins, the face and the soul of the Mets’ most heated rival, or with Jeter, with whom he must share a home city.
“Both,” he said, smiling. “And playing with both will be awesome, too.”
He wore a No. 4 on his back, having to surrender for the time being his familiar 5 to Johnson, who before Wright came along was probably the most accomplished 5 in Met history. He did so without blinking.
“Whatever works for the team,” he said, emphasizing the final word, the way the team itself will in the days to come as players warm to the idea of playing on the same side, baseball’s version of frenemies.