This Is How They Roll

The Phillies were horrible early (11--14 in April). Howard got off to a woeful start, then missed two weeks in May. Chase Utley , Rollins 's double-play partner, who had a .336 batting average and .577 slugging percentage at week's end, missed nearly all of August. Forty-five players have spent time on the 25-man roster this season (injuries, demotions, trades, more injuries). And somehow by last Friday night the Phils were 11 games over .500. All year they've had one rock: Mr. Jimmy, 28, in his seventh full season in the majors, all with the Phils, a pro's pro. With AI, the former Sixer, exiled to Denver , and D. McNabb, the Eagles quarterback, at a career crossroads, J-Roll is the most popular athlete in Philadelphia at the moment, the best thing going, along with the slugger Howard and Utley .

Rollins woke up Saturday afternoon in a hotel in quiet North Miami Beach , far from the sashaying shoppers and loud clubs of South Beach, where many other teams stay. It was Sept. 1, and the Phils still trailed the Mets by two games in the National League East .

Rollins ate raw fish at lunch and said, "July first, you're two games out, there's still a lot of baseball left. August first, you're two games out, there's still a lot of baseball left. September first, you're two games out, you're in the race. We have a chance. I said that thing at the start of the season—'We're the team to beat.' I challenged my team. I challenged the Mets . It's made the whole season juicy, that one sentence. But I stand by it. You want to win, you're going to have to beat us. Now we're in the last 10 meters of the 100, and everybody's sprinting, full-out."

AS THEY SAY in Spain—and Rollins took Spanish in high school and improved it while playing winter ball in Venezuela one off-season—Yesterday is not today. On Saturday night, the middle game of three, and the Marlins actually drew a crowd, later announced as nearly 25,000. There were thousands of fans with cheap plastic maracas in hand and Latin music was in the air, reverberating through a cavernous stadium built for the NFL's Dolphins. When Rollins stepped in to begin the second game of the series, the Phils were already playing catch-up. The Mets had won an afternoon game against the Braves in Atlanta .

In his first at bat Rollins again gave his team a jolt. He worked the count full and then homered to right, his 25th of the year—this one with his own bat. By night's end he had four hits, raising his average to .300. He stole his 28th base. He knocked in three, bringing his RBI total to 79, and scored another, boosting his major league-leading total to 118. An underrated defensive shortstop, admired by Phillies' pitchers for his excellent positioning, he was flawless with the glove. MVP? There's still a month to go.

But on a beautiful Saturday evening in Miami , the visitors lost 12--6, maracas in their ears all night long.

The Phillies can score runs; their home park is tiny, and they average 5.5 runs-per-game, third-best in baseball. But their pitching staff, with its 4.85 ERA (second-worst in the NL), is somewhere between spotty and woeful, and always piecemeal. Talk about pitching by committee. The Phillies have used 28 pitchers this season—four of whom have been the nominal closer at one point.

"I had a good game," Rollins said, walking through the bowels of the stadium, heading for the team bus. "So what? I didn't do what I did for myself. I did it for the team. And we lost. So what I did, it doesn't mean s—."

He was wearing a snug, long-sleeved black T-shirt, sparkling diamond studs in his ears, a massive white-gold crucifix (a fashion statement, not a religious one) around his neck, an iPhone clipped to his thick brown belt, jeans that cost more than your TV. He's making $8 million this year. His girlfriend, Johari Smith, a trainer at Springside, a highly regarded private girls school in Philadelphia , was in Puerto Rico with the fianc�e of resurgent leftfielder Pat Burrell and some other gals, for a bachelorette party. Rollins was in a city he enjoys. All was right in his world, except for one thing: He had never played an inning of postseason baseball in his life, and now the Phils were three back, and it was September, and the baseball microscope was out. He had, as the old-time ballplayers say, the red-ass.

THE PHILLIES' fan base is overwhelmingly white and middle-class; suburban Little Leaguers and their parents, and they have adopted Rollins, working-class in his inner-city boyhood in Oakland , black and proud and eager for somebody from the Phillies front office to ask him questions about the experience of the black baseball player. He said in Miami , "The black player today pretty much has to be a superstar. The role player, the guy off the bench, baseball's not looking to black players in those positions. Baseball has to take the blinders off." He's experienced things in his life that many of his fans have not. In 2005 he missed the wedding of his old teammate, Doug Glanville , to attend the funeral of his first cousin, Jamonie Robinson, a reformed drug dealer, Rollins says, whose life ended with a half dozen bullets in his body.