For Rolen, a friendship is closely held.(Baseball Notebook ...)

Through Spartanburg and Clearwater, then Reading and Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Philadelphia Phillies farmhands Scott Rolen and Dan Held dreamed of going to the big leagues together. Now, nearly 10 years after they started on this journey, they have been united for the first time in the majors with the Cardinals but the path was a circuitous one for Held, whom you will never see bat.

When Rolen played at Spartanburg in 1994, he hit 14 home runs. The first baseman on that team and Rolen's roommate was Held, who hit 18. In 1995 at Clearwater, Rolen hit 10 home runs. Held, still Rolen's roommate, hit a Florida State League-leading 21.

About this time, Rolen and Held legitimately could harbor those aspirations of going to The Show together. And so it was that in 1996 at Class AA Reading, Rolen hit nine home runs while batting .361 in half a season before earning a promotion to Class AAA Scranton-Wilkes Barre and then to the big leagues with the Phillies. Held hit 26 home runs, but all he got was a four-game promotion to Scranton-Wilkes Barre.

The next year, Rolen was the regular third baseman for the Phillies, but Held was still at Reading, where he hit 26 home runs again.

Now, Rolen is an All-Star, a veteran of six-plus seasons in the major leagues. Despite having consistently better power numbers than Rolen and hitting .270, Held never got past Class AAA before taking a brief tour in Taiwan, a stop in Camden, New Jersey in an independent circuit and a minor league coaching job.

Held retired at 31, well ahead of when he had planned. "The opportunities weren't there," he said. "The power numbers went down. I realize why now. I got into some bad habits and I wasn't swinging the way I used to. But I had fun. Reading was awesome."

Lee Thomas was the Phillles' general manager then and remembers Held well. "He had ...