3B - Scott Rolen - Team#1_The Favorites

A difficult choice, the third baseman. There has been little to choose from in the ranks of my hometown Astros--call it the superstar void: the stifling vacuum in place without the single marble-carved icon to occupy The Position, the vaguely outlined piece of real estate in the general vicinity of a Base. There were promising entries--Morgan Ensberg had one fine year but then his tendencies towards the tentative took over. Ken Caminiti elicits a sigh, but he'd be ineligible anyhow, his best days were a daydream. Bill Spiers was likable, but he had the back of an eighty-year-old retired janitor.

Outsourced, then, the pool of third basemen today doesn't offer up the single, glowing candidate. Eric Chavez is quick and young, but he's weighted down by unrealized potential. A-Rod is too marble-carved, too pensive for third base. Chipper Jones is the perfect third baseman, so much so that he is, in fact, too perfect.

The question, then: what makes for a Favorite third baseman? He must be surly, a little off. Third basemen are the closest thing that baseball has to a hockey goalie. Catchers might seem the logical choice, but catchers have to think too much, to gauge too many personalities, calculate odds and tendencies. Third basemen play a game that is parceled into 1.5 second segments. Their task is utterly reactionary. To be reactionary, he's got to be stubborn and impulsive: a little off. Nobody with any sense of himself would put his chest to the hardest hit balls that a fielder will see. The third baseman I have played with were pariahs or nerds, or had some crushing flaw in their game: One handsome golden boy third baseman I knew threw the ball as though a piece of rebar from his shoulder to his wrist. It was a hard throw, boy, but where it would land was anybody's worst guess.

I thought and thought, and here is my conclusion: Scott Rolen. His recent run-ins with his manager imply a certain surly attitude. His batting stance at the plate is a Little League coach's nightmare (experiment: copy his tension-filled stance and see if you are able to relax and focus on anything). Playing his position, Rolen leaves the single impression, in my mind, of the classic third baseman in his ready position, then falling madly towards a ground ball, then heaving an awkward-looking missile to first: the shortstop's antithesis.

Here is what I just learned: the best third baseman is as disparate from his brother to the northeast as is possible. A-Rod is a transformed shortstop, and he always will be.

Lineup - The Favorites

C - Mike Piazza
1B - Lance Berkman
2B - Craig Biggio
3B - Scott Rolen
SS - Adam Everett
LF -
CF -
RF -

SP -
RP -

Manager -