Rollins, like so many players who have been with one organization for their entire careers, respects loyalty. In Philadelphia, he has been an All-Star, a champion and the winner of a Most Valuable Player award. He is the all-time Phillies hits leader, and no doubt there will be speculation about the Hall of Fame. So there were compelling reasons to stay. Yet in the course of one’s baseball life — or maybe just life itself — priorities can change, and then loyalty seems to develop loopholes.

When an everyday player stays in one city for most of his career and then elects to go, that is seen as a form of treason. It is much easier to leave when you are riding the bench or when you have just arrived, like a free agent who has little history and is passing through to win or move on. And it’s even more nuanced than that. The Hall of Famers Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux both spent years with the Atlanta Braves — 16 (plus three in the minors) and 11, respectively. Glavine eventually left for the Mets, Maddux for the Chicago Cubs. But here’s the difference: Maddux had begun his career with the Cubs, whereas Glavine had always been a Brave — and consequently took a lot more heat from Atlanta fans for leaving (going to a rival like New York didn’t help, either). Even after he later came back.

I spoke with Jimmy Rollins before a game last week, before he’d made his decision, and he said that it was so hard to see what the future held because to perform at this game, you have to be “in the mud,” obsessed with the task at hand. Perspective is neutralized, stunted so that you can capture only the most relevant, time-sensitive data that will determine how to approach your opponent that day. Then you look up and realize your 20-year career has been a collection of days where you couldn’t see tomorrow.

This, if you’re in Jimmy’s shoes and considering trade options, creates the feeling of an either-or situation: My decision about my baseball future says I am either a fierce loyalist or a traitor. I am either an opportunist looking to “win now” or I am complacent for remaining in a sinking boat. I am either putting family first or putting family last. Because any player who can choose whether to stay or leave wonders how he will be remembered, partly as a result of that choice. But that’s a fruitless exercise, because you can never know in advance. The harsh reality is that you may never get that clean answer to the question about your legacy, because remembrance depends on the beholder.

Jimmy does not have the luxury of standing where I stand now — 10 years post-career, with three young kids, a wife, a day job, time to have discovered what is going on outside that mud. And from this perspective, I’ve found that the day-to-day obsession with the quantitative and pattern-based analysis that a player must sift through does not, ultimately, have anything to do with what people will most remember about your time in this game. Sure, your on-base percentage, your salary, your batting average in the playoffs and the number of rings are important, but my most intimate conversations about my contribution to people’s lives were not couched in numbers.