Scott Rolen

In the next season, he was named National League Rookie of the Year, becoming the first Phillie since Dick Allen in 1964 to win the award.

Scott Bruce Rolen (born April 4, 1975) is an American former professional baseball third baseman.

During his senior year at Jasper in 1993, he was named Indiana Mr. Baseball.

He was also named to the Indiana high school basketball All-Star team.

After a flurry of scholarship offers from schools like Oklahoma State and the University of Alabama, Rolen ultimately committed to playing college basketball for the Georgia Bulldogs.

That commitment was complicated when the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB) selected Rolen in the second round of the 1993 MLB Draft.

Rolen told reporters after the draft that he hoped he could forge a deal that allowed him to play for the Phillies farm system in the summer and on the Georgia basketball team in the winter.

On July 22, however, Rolen chose to forego his commitment to Georgia to sign with the Phillies and focus on baseball; he was subsequently assigned to the Rookie-level Martinsville Phillies of the Appalachian League.

He played 25 games in his first season of professional baseball, batting .313 with five doubles and 12 runs batted in (RBIs) in 80 at bats.

After attending spring training with the Phillies, Rolen opened the 1994 season with the Low A Spartanburg Phillies of the South Atlantic League.

While his offensive metrics in Spartanburg were strong, batting .295 with 10 home runs, 30 doubles, and 61 RBIs by the last week of August, Rolen's 35 defensive errors in that same span caused concern among sports analysts.

Manager Roy Majtyka defended Rolen's defensive performance, saying, "I've seen bad hops that hit him in the head be ruled an error. It's a joke. I honestly think you could take half of them away."

Rolen was named Spartanburg's Most Valuable Player after batting .294 with 14 home runs and 72 RBIs, but he "wasn't satisfied with anything [he] did", telling reporters after the season, "I need to improve my entire game."

When the minor league season concluded, Rolen participated in the 1994 Florida Instructional League to continue honing his sport.

As a minor league baseball player, Rolen was unaffected by the 1994–95 MLB strike, and he reported that April to the Class A-Advanced Clearwater Phillies of the Florida State League.

He missed the first part of the season, however, with a fractured hook of hamate on his glove hand that required surgery.

He was activated from the disabled list on June 6, hitting two home runs against the Brevard County Manatees in his first game after the injury.

The injury appeared to help Rolen's offensive performance, as it was less painful for him to hit a pitch well inside the strike zone than outside of it.

After hitting .290 with ten home runs and 39 RBIs in 238 at bats in Clearwater, Rolen was promoted to the Double-A Reading Phillies of the Eastern League on August 16.

He played in an additional 20 games after his promotion, batting .290 with three home runs and 15 RBIs in 76 at bats.

He played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, Toronto Blue Jays, and Cincinnati Reds from 1996 to 2012.

Rather than promoting Rolen directly to the major leagues, the Phillies chose to keep him in Reading for the start of the 1996 season, with Todd Zeile playing third base in Philadelphia.

After recording nine home runs and 42 RBIs while leading the Eastern League by a .361 average, 83 hits, 22 doubles, a .568 slugging percentage, and 33 extra-base hits in 61 games for Reading, Rolen was promoted to the Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons of the International League on June 13.

Rolen's promotion coincided with a difficult stretch for the Phillies, and the team began planning at the end of June to call him up to Philadelphia after the All-Star Game break.

He batted .274 in 45 games for Scranton, with two home runs and 19 RBIs in 168 at bats.

Rather than taking advantage of the MLB trading deadline to acquire new players for the struggling team, the Phillies chose to promote Rolen for his MLB debut on August 1, 1996.

He debuted for the first game of a doubleheader against the St. Louis Cardinals, recording his first major league hit and error in the 2–1 Phillies victory.

Rolen's first two home runs came on August 21 in a 6–0 shutout of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

What should have been Rolen's rookie season came to a premature end on September 7, when he suffered a fractured right ulna after being hit by a pitch from Steve Trachsel in a 4–2 Philadelphia victory over the Chicago Cubs.

Had Rolen not fractured his arm in his final plate appearance, he would have been considered a 1996 rookie, but a hit by pitch does not count as an at bat, thus preserving his eligibility for the following season.

Rolen started his career with the Phillies, where he was named the 1997 National League Rookie of the Year.

Rolen finished the season batting .254 with four home runs and 18 RBIs in 130 at bats, the maximum threshold to be considered a rookie for the 1997 season.

In 1998, he won his first of eight Gold Glove awards.

Only Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson (16) and Mike Schmidt (10), plus current Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado (10) have more at third base.

Rolen was supposed to be one of the key pieces in the Phillies' revival.

However, claiming that management was not trying hard enough to win, as well as having constant friction with manager Larry Bowa, Rolen demanded a trade.

Rolen became known for two iconic postseason home runs with the Cardinals: a go-ahead hit off of Roger Clemens in Game 7 of the 2004 NLCS and a Game 1 homer off of Justin Verlander in the 2006 World Series.

Regarded as one of the best defensive third basemen of all time, Rolen won eight Gold Glove Awards over his career, the fourth-most among third basemen.

A seven-time All-Star, Rolen was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 23, 2023.

Rolen was born in Evansville, Indiana, and attended Jasper High School in Jasper, Indiana.