Play with fear and ignorance
Somewhere around the time the knees go, a veteran turns into a hanger-on. At that point he may retire, or if he wants to keep playing, will be washed up.
UNLESS… he’s a beloved veteran like Derek Jeter, who is still hailed as a class act who Plays the Right Way.
Look, I’m a Yankees fan and I like Jeter, but nobody seems to want to say he’s washed up… though he definitely is.
Thanks for all the help, everyone. None of this gets me closer to the list I mentioned in my OP, but it’s been fun to read. 
FWIW, I finally laid this question to rest when I found this page at baseball-almanac.com: A Ballplayers Life by Sports Illustrated : A Legendary List on Baseball Almanac
According to them, it was a list from a July 1981 Sports Illustrated. Given that I only ever looked at February issues of Sports Illustrated (ahem), I doubtless saw it re-posted somewhere.
I’m confident that it is the list I was thinking of back in 2014 when I posted the OP, even though “rookie” isn’t on the list. In fact, that’s probably why I never Googled it up before, as I certainly included that in my search terms. I have no idea who I was going to pass it along to back then, but at least I found it. This is almost as good as that time I got to ask Brad Dourif what the deal was with the gesturing in Dune.
Nice to see this. I always like the way that, in boxing, a fighter will be referred to as a wily, ringwise veteran if he is a thug that resorts to low blows, thumbs in the eye, kidney punches and the odd head butt.
Oh, and because Baseball Almanac didn’t bother, it’s on page 53 of the July 27, 1981, issue of SI.
Conveniently available here: Sports Illustrated 1981-07-27 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
I remember Don Meredith referring to “WCVs”.
The “clubhouse leader”. A veteran that will sit down with young players after they did something to cost the team the game and have a chat with them, or maybe give an ass kicking speech before a game to fire the squad up. Darren Daulton was famous for this in both Philly and Florida.
Just the opposite, for lack of a better term, a player that is a bad guy or who doesn’t get along with other players or generally has a poor attitude or personality flaw is a “clubhouse cancer”. Managers hate these guys because they are afraid their bad attitude will rub off and “spread” throughout the team. Even the most minor things, like how the player takes batting practice, can turn off a manager.
The “Rule 5” player. These are especially coveted if they produce because they are young players that don’t have a spot on a team so that team (as per MLB rules) must allow them to be drafted by other teams. Shane Victorino and IIRC Jayson Werth were Rule 5 players that blossomed in their late 20s. It makes a GM look good when they discover potential in a player their previous team did not.
“Nibbler”- a pitcher that doesn’t throw very fast, so tries to fool the batter by throwing junk pitches right around the strike zone, or “nibbles” at it.
This thread reminds me of the joke about the cannibal coach/manager who couldn’t decide between the raw rookie or the seasoned veteran.
I am pretty sure Werth was just a minor league free agent.
Victorino, believe it or not, was a Rule 5 pick TWICE. The Padres snagged him as a Rule 5 player, but he didn’t play well so they gave him back (to the Dodgers) and then the Phillies took him a year or two later.
The best Rule 5 pick of all time was of course Roberto Clemente.