Former major leaguer Rollins has ties to area
Western Pennsylvania has produced some outstanding baseball players, some that have ties to the area might surprise you. This caught my eye recently.
Rich Rollins was born in the seemingly soothing town of Mount Pleasant in 1938. That鈥檚 right, former major league third baseman Rollins is from the area. His father, who was a welder, moved the family to Parma, Ohio, but Rollins spent his summers in Mount Pleasant.
鈥淚 used to spend my summers in Mt. Pleasant when I was in grade school,鈥� Rollins recalled. 鈥淭here were a lot of baseball team鈥檚 in the area. I was a kid around eight or nine years old, and we used to just play all day with the group of people that I was with. My favorite sport was always baseball. My dad was a baseball player when he was in Mount Pleasant and I had two uncles that played baseball. Baseball was my favorite sport and still is.鈥�
Rollins played sandlot baseball in the Cleveland area and was all-league in both baseball and basketball at Parma High School. He went to college at Kent State University and fashioned a nice career with the Golden Flashes.
The 5-foot-10, 185-pound Rollins was a three-time All-Mid America Conference selection as a second baseman from 1958-1960, batting .383, second in KSU history, only to former New York Yankee great Thurman Munson.
鈥淚 played freshman ball there,鈥� Rollins said. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 have a scholarship there, we had to work our way through room and board jobs. My teammate on that team, the shortstop, was Gene Michael, who went on to play with the Yankees. I remember Thurman Munson well, in fact I鈥檝e got a letter sitting here someplace from when I helped recruit him when I was playing ball for the Twins when they were trying to get him to go to Kent State, because he was raised in Canton, Ohio. But we had a great team, we beat teams like Ohio State two out of three Notre Dame and West Virginia. We didn鈥檛 win the championship there, but that was a very memorable time of my life.鈥�
Rollins was one of those college players that the scouts all rush to see 鈥� and then dismiss. He was short, bowlegged and stubby-armed. Worse yet, he wore glasses to correct astigmatism in his right eye.
He was content to return to Parma High School to teach health and physical education. He had the job lined up after leaving Kent State.
There was no draft and he had gotten no attention from pro scouts. Then Floyd Baker, a Senators scout, invited Rollins to a tryout at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., before the 1960 season.
In his first at-bat, Rollins hit the ball out of the park. He did it again his next time up.
鈥淚 still don鈥檛 know how that happened,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t was just a gift from God, is what it amounted to.鈥�
Of the 50 or so players at the tryout, Rollins says, he was the last to be interviewed. In the room were Twins owner Calvin Griffith and his scouts, who offered him a spot on the team鈥檚 Class D team in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
How about the Class B team in Wilson, North Carolina? Rollins asked.
The Senators鈥� brain trust scoffed. No way, they told him.
鈥淟ong story short, I said, 鈥榃ell, just let me have my plane ticket back home,鈥� 鈥� Rollins says. 鈥淎nd I think that shocked the heck out of 鈥檈m. It shocks the heck out of me every time I think about it.鈥�
When Rollins got home, he returned a phone message from the Senators. They signed him up for a paltry $6,000 and shipped him off to the Wilson Tobs in the Class B Carolina League.
Rollins didn鈥檛 spend much time in the minor leagues, playing only 101 games and hitting .314 in his minor league career.
He made his major league debut with the first-year Minnesota Twins on June 16, 1961.
鈥淚t was a Sunday afternoon,鈥� he says. 鈥淚鈥檒l never forget it.鈥�
Rollins played sparingly in 1961, appearing in only 13 games.
He earned the full-time third base job in 1962 and led Minnesota in hitting and on-base percentage with marks of .298 and .374. He also drove in 96 runs and scored another 96 for a club that finished just five games back of the Yankees. The young man鈥檚 instant success earned the respect of his peers, who voted him into both All-Star Games that summer with the highest vote total of any American League player.
His father watched him for the last time in a 1963 spring training exhibition game. He died of cancer that spring.
鈥淚鈥檒l never forget it,鈥� Rollins says, 鈥�(Twins manager) Billy Martin comes and gets my dad out of the stands. And he takes him on the field with him, and the whole game, he had him sit in the dugout, and it was just awesome. I鈥檒l never forget that.鈥�
Despite an off-season workout regimen that was ahead of its time, Rich went into his sophomore spring training feeling sluggish. Early in the season, he suffered a broken jaw, when he hit in the face by Tigers right-hander Paul Foytack. That led to a four-day hospital stay, some weight loss, and an 0-for-25 stretch. Remarkably, he recovered to lead his team in batting once more at .307 and matched his previous year鈥檚 totals of 23 doubles and 16 home runs.
For some reason, Rollins鈥� performance slipped after reaching such great heights in his first two seasons. He hit .270 in 1964, though he set career highs with 25 doubles and a league-leading 10 triples. In Minnesota鈥檚 pennant-winning 1965 campaign, he fell to .249 with five homers and 32 RBIs.
He appeared in three games in the World Series, going 0-for-2 with a walk. Rich stuck around with the Twins for three more years as a part-timer, continuing to hit in the .240 range. He joined the expansion Seattle Pilots for 58 games in 1969 before being shut down with a knee injury. After a similarly short 1970 season that was split between Milwaukee and Cleveland, the one-time rookie star was finished at 32. He hit .269 for his career with 77 home runs and 399 RBIs.
After retiring, Rollins spent a few years as a minor-league manager in the Cleveland organization, and worked in the Indians鈥� front office for 14 years. He later worked in the front office of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team, at one point serving as the public relations director for both the Cavs and the Richfield Coliseum that they called home.
Rollins is a charter member of the Parma High School Hall of Fame, the Greater Cleveland Hall of Fame, the Summit County Hall of Fame and the Kent State University Hall of Fame.
Now 77, Rollins resides in Akron with his wife of 54 years, Lynn. They have six children: three boys and three girls and 11 grandkids.
George Von Benko鈥檚 鈥淢emory Lane鈥� column appears in the Monday editions of the 缅北禁地. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.