As Scott Rolen enters the Hall of Fame today, teammates reflect on this defense. Here is Todd Zeile, a third baseman himself:

Todd Zeile was Scott Rolen’s first major league first baseman and an experienced third baseman in his own right. The 1996 Phillies were the third of Zeile’s 11 MLB teams. He had a lot of teammates, but few compared to Rolen defensively.

Todd Zeile (Phillies 1B, 1996): “There’s a timing mechanism that good third basemen have [so] that they know how much time they have to deliver the ball to get the runner by a step. Scott, for as athletic as he was at third base, had that built-in clock. I had really struggled with that and made a lot of unforced errors. He would dive and sprawl and roll and come up and throw it from weird angles but he always seemed to have that clock that would give him just enough time to get his balance, make accurate throws, and not make unforced errors.”

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There is also a great bit from Eduardo Perez about how a first baseman could not take his eye off a ball hit to third, because Rolen would throw the ball to the bag if you were there or not.