He Knows How to Grab Center Stage

Otis Nixon has done something in two days as a Dodger that I didn’t think was humanly possible.

He makes Mike Piazza feel fat.

“The guy, he’s chiseled like Mr. Universe. He’s got about 2% body fat,” marveled Piazza, who is not exactly a 98-pound weakling.

“He’s built like a statue. Next to him, we’re like a bunch of blobs walking around.”

Mike, it’s true. Otis does have a lean, mean, sportswriter’s kind of body.

Nixon is a 38-year-old outfielder with the rippled midriff of a middleweight boxer. His wife, Juanita, was once married to Sugar Ray Leonard. I bet Otis could spar a few rounds, but I doubt Sugar Ray could catch a ball over a center-field wall.

Nixon made a couple of catches Thursday afternoon that stretched his 6-foot-2 body over an eight-foot fence.

The first fly ball had a rainbow’s arc. Nixon snagged it above the 395-foot marker in the webbing of his black Rawlings glove.

The other fly ball was more of a rope. It smacked against the pocket of Nixon’s glove, but the crowd had to wait until he held the ball aloft to know that Otis caught it.

He stole two home runs from the Montreal Expos to save a 1-0 Dodger victory. It was out-and-out robbery.

Proving once and for all, Nixon is a crook.

The batter each time was David Segui, who was not a happy Expo.

“He stared at me the whole game after that,” Nixon said.

Segui also stared at Strike 3 in Montreal’s last turn at bat, with a man on second base. He was in no mood to discuss Nixon’s defense afterward.

Asked which ball he hit harder, Segui snapped, “I don’t give a . . . . They both got caught.”

Nixon is now the everyday center fielder. He is the fifth one tried out there this season by Manager Bill Russell, who will use Raul Mondesi in right field, Nixon in center and a committee in left.

At the rest of the positions?

You know. The blobs.

“We got a center fielder yesterday,” Russell said after Thursday’s game. “And he saved us three runs today.”

Nixon made himself welcome in a hurry.

He even said of his own efforts, “You make a lot of friends when you make catches like that.”

Friends on your own team, anyway.

Segui stopped after making the turn at first after Nixon’s acrobatic catch in the fourth inning had taken a two-run homer from him. While Nixon and Mondesi celebrated by bumping gloves, Segui stood waiting for a replay on the Dodger Stadium scoreboard.

After that, he gave Otis the evil eye.

“I didn’t look at him. He’s too big for me to be messing with,” said Nixon, who apparently does not think of himself as another Sugar Ray.

He sure is fast on his feet, though. Playing with the Atlanta Braves, Nixon once stole 72 bases in a season. He stole five more in the 1992 World Series.

Furthermore, he stole a homer with a sensational defensive play.

“They still call it ‘The Catch’ down there,” Nixon said.

Before his first day game as a Dodger, a welcome tip came from Brett Butler, who warned Nixon that the ball seems to carry more in sunlight than at night.

I don’t know if Butler could have gotten his 5-10 frame up high enough to catch Segui’s swats. He might have. But he might not, because Brett’s no spring chicken of 38 like Otis is.

“The way I look at it, I can be an asset by scoring runs, playing defense, getting on base, stealing bases and getting a timely hit once in a while,” Nixon said.

What player wouldn’t?

But I know what Nixon means. He won’t hit with power, like that flabby, blobby, too-much-pizza Piazza.

(If someone with Piazza’s body is a blob, that must make me a sumo wrestler.)

Piazza poked a ball Thursday that went so high and so far, Shaquille O’Neal on a ladder couldn’t have caught it. No outfielder could have.

“If there is one, we better check him out,” Nixon said.

Yes, because the Dodgers still do need an everyday left fielder.