A secret meeting kept Jimmy Rollins in Philly and made him a Phillies icon: ‘I was meant to be here’

Jimmy Rollins told the Phillies in 2005 spring training that he did not want to negotiate a contract extension once the season began. So when opening day arrived without a deal, the Phillies granted his wish. And then broke the agreement four weeks later.

David Montgomery, Ed Wade, and Ruben Amaro Jr. — then the team’s top decision makers — surprised Rollins that May in the trainer’s room of Citizens Bank Park. They made Rollins a new offer, promised to keep it silent from the media, and officiated an extension two weeks later to keep Rollins in Philadelphia through 2011.

“Nothing discussed in the trainer’s room leaves the trainer’s room,” Wade said Friday night.

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It was the last key move made by Wade — who was added Friday with Rollins to the team’s Wall of Fame — before he was fired as general manager after that season.

Wade often is credited for not trading Chase Utley and Ryan Howard while they were prospects. He also made sure Rollins stayed.

Rollins said then he would consider playing on the West Coast if he didn’t get a new deal with the Phillies. Instead, Wade’s secret meeting made sure Rollins’ West Coast chapter didn’t happen until years later.

Rollins stayed in Philly to say the Phillies were the team to beat and then was the catalyst three years later when they won it all. Wade’s contract — “A lot of people were telling me not to sign him to an extension,” Wade said — made sure Rollins became a franchise icon.

“You say a lot of things at contract time to put a little pressure on them,” Rollins said after his Wall of Fame ceremony. “I would have loved to go home, no doubt about it, if things didn’t work here. It would have been playing in front of my family. But other than that, I didn’t really plan on going anywhere. Those were just tactics that players use. You have to say something.”

The Phillies saw right through those tactics, Wade cracked.

“I was meant to be here,” the Californian said. “I was drafted here, and I told my mom when I got drafted that I was going to win a championship in this city. That’s what it became about for me: chasing a championship. It wasn’t about going anywhere. … This is my city.”

Rollins didn’t know much about the Phillies when they drafted him in 1996 — “When the Phillies called, I said, ‘Who?’” he said — except that he cheered against them three years earlier in the World Series because childhood favorite Rickey Henderson played for the Toronto Blue Jays.

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“First, I was upset. I was like, ‘Man, they suck,’” Rollins said. “Come on, man. The ’96 Phillies? We know what they were like. But I promised my mom. I said, ‘When I get there, we’ll win.’ I was able to keep that promise.”

He reached the majors four years later as one of the first members of the team’s championship core to arrive in Philadelphia. He was an All-Star in his rookie year, signed that extension in 2005, and then proclaimed the Phillies two years later as “the team to beat” before they even reached the postseason.

“There were times where I went into the clubhouse, looked into the mirror, and said, ‘Maybe we just became a wild card, and it’s still true. You don’t have to win the division. Just get to the playoffs,’” Rollins said. “But we won the division.”

Rollins said he lost 15 pounds that season as he played all 162 games, determined to make good on his guarantee. The Phillies famously erased a seven-game deficit with 17 games left to chase down the New York Mets on the season’s final day. Rollins was the National League’s MVP, and the Phillies were the NL East’s team to beat.

“We’re in the clubhouse, TVs are off, and we’re locked in,” Rollins said about the final game of the 2007 season. “Because no matter what happens, we have to win. But you hear the crowd; you hear the stands going crazy. I’m trying to focus, but I want to know what’s going on. I also don’t want to go out there and be disappointed that the Mets are up, 5-0.

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“Everyone knows I’m one of the last guys out of the clubhouse. Do a couple sprints, and I’m ready. But I couldn’t contain the excitement. I ran out, took a deep breath, really nervous to look at the scoreboard. ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. You have a job to do.’ But my head whips around, and it’s 3-0 Marlins in the first inning. I ducked back in, and I’m like, ‘You’re out here way too early, dude.’ Then I hear the crowd go crazy again. It’s 4-0, 5-0. The crowd was going off like we already won. We went out there, clinched it, and it felt like the weight of the world was off my shoulders from saying, ‘We’re the team to beat.’ It was the most fun season for me.”

A year later, they were world champions after playing a game that spanned three days.

“I remember telling Geoff Jenkins when the game was back on that it was like playing Nintendo,” Rollins said. “You press pause, and you can walk away for a couple days. As long as no one presses unpause, the game resumes in action. There’s no start over. You have to jump back into it.

“He looked at me like, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ They had to switch hotels. They got kicked out and had to go to Delaware. We had home-field advantage. We’re at home relaxing while they’re scrambling. When the game started, it was basically just pressing pause again. I guess it worked. He got a knock, I got a sacrifice bunt, we win, and we celebrate. There was no better celebration than here in this city.”

Wade was fired three years before the Phillies won it all — “I always felt like he got the short end of the stick on that,” Rollins said — and was sleeping when Pat Gillick credited him on national TV after the Phillies won the pennant.

Wade’s front office drafted so many of the key components of the 2008 team. And a secret meeting made sure one of them stayed.

“All of the pieces were in place that Ed chose,” Rollins said. “He said for years, ‘Just wait until this new group of players gets up there, and we’ll have a championship-caliber team.’ His vision did come to fruition, and we became a championship team.”