Jimmy Rollins Official Website

Jimmy Rollins practically wished this burgeoning Phillies dynasty into being, so it's fitting he has come through in the most high-pressure situations of this postseason.

Rollins famously, and audaciously, branded the never-won-a-thing Phillies "the team to beat" in the National League East before the 2007 season. The Phillies have won the division each year since he said it. That says something about Rollins' feel for his team and something about his teammates' respect for him as a leader.

It's a twist on the old Rocky Horror Picture Show theme, "Don't dream it, be it." Rollins dreamed it and the Phillies became it.

Rollins' series-changing, game-winning double Monday night was just the latest big hit by the little shortstop and his mates. Watching these Phillies swashbuckle their way through a second consecutive October, it is easy (and pleasant) to forget the bouts of big-game shrinkage that seemed to torpedo this team for much of the previous decade.

"When I first took over as manager here, in the first two years we chased the wild card," Charlie Manuel said before yesterday's optional workout. "There were individuals on our team - and I didn't call their names out in meetings - but we used to address the fact that we'd get tight and we would kind of panic and we couldn't play in the right moment. . . . We'd get up, go to the plate, chase bad balls, and things like that."

For four seasons - Larry Bowa's last two as manager and Manuel's first two - the Phillies won 85 to 88 games and wilted in the wild-card race. Manuel didn't name names, but the lineup regulars for most of that stretch included Rollins, Bobby Abreu, Mike Lieberthal, David Bell, Pat Burrell, and Jim Thome.

It is no coincidence that Rollins is the only one who is still here. He is the pivot man that got the Phillies from a talented team that couldn't to a talented team that can and does.

When Manuel says the Phillies "kind of changed the attitude on our team," he means the gradual replacement of those "tight" players with the current nucleus. Ryan Howard displaced Thome and won the National League Rookie of the Year award in 2005. Shane Victorino's emergence allowed general manager Pat Gillick to trade Abreu away in 2006. Carlos Ruiz became a gritty, pitcher-savvy alternative to Lieberthal. In Pedro Feliz and Jayson Werth, Gillick found productive guys for third base and right field.

"It helps," Gillick cracked, "to have better players."

Ultimately, the Phillies developed (Howard, Chase Utley, Cole Hamels) or otherwise acquired players with attitudes and professional approaches more like Rollins' own.

"You try to get a feel for what drives people," Gillick said. "People have different hot buttons. Chase and Jimmy and Howard, their hot button is that they like to play. They like to be on the field. The money is important, but my feeling is it's secondary. They just love to play. Unselfish. Their goals are team goals."

Rollins has talked about coming up through the Phillies' organization and being dismayed by the prevailing attitude. Everyone hoped to win, certainly, but it didn't seem as if anyone really expected to. Players who were really driven - Curt Schilling, Scott Rolen - were ostracized and finally traded away.

It was 2001, the year Allen Iverson took the 76ers to the NBA Finals and the Eagles went to their first NFC championship game of the decade, that Rollins became the Phillies' everyday shortstop. The entire landscape of Philadelphia sports literally has changed since those lethargic summer days at Veterans Stadium.

Rollins has been a keen observer of the whole scene. He's a regular at big games played by the Eagles and Sixers. He has a feel for the fans - sometimes more of a feel than the fans find comfortable - and has spoken his mind about that and every other subject.

In 2007, he made his team-to-beat declaration and won the NL MVP award while leading the Phillies to their first NL East title since 1993. A year later, the Phillies won it all. And now, thanks to Rollins' ninth-inning handiwork, they are one win from a second straight World Series appearance.

"You already have it planned out in your head how you want things to go," Rollins said after Game 4. "Sometimes it goes that way, sometimes it doesn't. But being confident in your ability helps a lot. You don't question what you're going to do."

He was talking about his approach to that high-pressure at-bat against Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton, but his words applied to everything that has happened since Rollins challenged his teammates and himself to realize their potential - indeed, challenged the entire organization to compete with elite franchises such as the Yankees and Red Sox.

"We believe in ourselves," Rollins said, and he should know. He believed first.