Phillies All Say Beautiful, Heartbreaking Things About Jimmy Rollins

Jimmy Rollins took a short break from toying with our emotions this winter to host a charity event for Prevent Child Abuse Pennsylvania.  It is not uncommon for the Phillies to support each other even in times of possible emotional devastation.  Some of the other Phillies did in fact show up, and they all took the opportunity to make you feel like Jimmy was already slipping away forever and all we have left are the pictures in our homemade Phillies yearbooks.

"“The toughest thing is to almost imagine our club without Jimmy Rollins.”–David Montgomery"

Our imaginations are probably the worst things to be using right now, David.  With them we can imagine Opening Day 2012 and the starting shortstop is Jeff Francoeur somehow, or any one of a thousand equally horrible nightmares from the darkest, filthiest corners of our demented minds.

"“Hey, if it were up to me, I’d just slap him upside the head and say, ‘You’re staying.'”–Ryan Howard"

Ryan Howard, succumbing to the limits of his ruptured Achilles, has begun attempting to make his friends and family “like him” staging “accidents.”  Hitting Jimmy in the head would be a pretty compelling argument, but chances are they haven’t perfected head reattachment surgery, so even if they fished it out of the punch bowl it wouldn’t be of much use.  Unless Jimmy was smiling craftily when it got knocked off and he was just frozen forever in a state of eternal swag.

"“He’s one of the best shortstops in baseball, and having him behind you instills a lot of confidence.  But in baseball, this happens. These things take care of themselves.”–Cole Hamels"

Cole is trying to be strong for us, like a big sister after your parents abandon you.  ‘This happens’ is just a wonderful thing to say in the course of this horrible process.