PHILADELPHIA — No, Aaron Rowand doesn’t necessarily need to watch replays of the play that forever secured his place in Phillies lore. His grip on the memory of May 11, 2006, is about as tight as on the baseball while running headlong into the W.B.
Mason sign at Citizens Bank Park. Much from that day sticks with Rowand 18 years later. In the third season of the Phillies’ ballpark, Rowand knew what was at stake when the Mets’ Xavier Nady skied a ball to deep center with the bases loaded and two out in first inning.
He’d even told Phillies starting pitcher Gavin Floyd as much before. “He threw the heck out of it every game, but he always had one big inning,” Rowand recalled Sunday. “It was a four-spot or a six.
And then it was zeroes. I was talking to him in batting practice that day in the outfield ..
. and before that game, I remember telling him, man you’ve got to stay away from that one inning. .
.. “I remember thinking, if I catch this ball, we’re going to win this game.
” The Phillies did, 2-0, in a rain-shortened five innings. Rowand was in the clubhouse for most of it, his face bashed and bloody after the collision 400 feet from home plate. In that moment — and in Rowand’s unintentional refutation of Ricky Watters’ infamous, “For who? For what?” faux pas of effort — Rowand set the blueprint for that decade’s two pennants and 2008 World Championship.
Even if his stay in Philadelphia was limited to 270 games and one All-Star nod, Rowand .