Sunday Was Father’s Day for Kennedy

So, now it is late Sunday afternoon and the Angels are staging a hug-fest in the middle of the Edison Field diamond, celebrating their first American League pennant, and an older gentleman who doesn’t have a media credential is climbing up a temporary photographer’s stand to capture the moment with his camera, trying to shake security personnel who are threatening, he says in reflection, “to carry me away.”

This, of course, is not the normal behavior of a 52-year-old history and sociology teacher at Riverside North High, but as Tom Kennedy says, “I was ecstatic, stunned and beyond knowing how to act.”

Who could blame him?

There were 44,834 others in Edison Field who pretty much didn’t know how to act either -- and none had a son who had just joined Babe Ruth, Reggie Jackson and George Brett, among others, in hitting three home runs in a postseason game.

The performance by second baseman Adam Kennedy in Game 5 of the American League championship series against the Minnesota Twins helped lift the Angels into the World Series and earned Kennedy the ALCS’ most-valuable-player trophy that he has since given to his dad.

Not for his dexterity in climbing on that photo stand, but for the lessons of life and baseball.

“He’s responsible for who I am and where I am,” Kennedy was saying Tuesday. “He put a ball in my hand when I was 2 years old and let me run with it. He taught me the enjoyment of the game -- to appreciate it, respect it, how to play it right.”

Tom Kennedy is touched by that, humbled by the MVP trophy (“He didn’t have to say a word when he gave it to me because it spoke for him”) and quick to credit his wife, Susie, for her disciplinary touch. As for putting a ball in Adam’s hand when he was 2?

“The way I remember it is that he threw an 88-mph fastball back at me and I knew something was up here,” Kennedy said with a laugh and a stretch, clearly having a better idea that something might be up with his oldest son while serving as North’s baseball coach from 1991 to 1998, winning a Southern Section title in 1994 with Adam as a senior shortstop and his brother, Bryan, as a freshman third baseman.

The senior Kennedy, who had played at UC Riverside, retired from coaching when Bryan, now a catcher in the Minnesota organization, moved on to Long Beach State and Adam was coming out of Cal State Northridge as the St. Louis Cardinals’ No. 1 draft choice in 1997.

Now, of course, Adam leans on Angel batting instructor Mickey Hatcher and gets off-season swing help from Mike Batesole, his former Northridge coach, and his dad, as Tom Kennedy put it, “is more personal cheerleader than a coach anymore. He’s surpassed my knowledge in all aspects.”

Then again, once a coach always a coach. There was Adam Kennedy, having already homered twice, coming to bat with two on, none out, and the Angels trailing, 5-3, in the seventh inning Sunday.

What was his dad thinking?

“I’m thinking, ‘Get that bunt down, son’ ” Tom Kennedy said of the obvious sacrifice situation. “Of course, when he fouled it off, I couldn’t help but stop being a coach and start being a dad again. I was actually happy because I thought he might get a chance to swing the bat again.”

Angel Manager Mike Scioscia was thinking right along with the former North coach. Scioscia took the bunt off, and Kennedy launched a three-run homer on a two-strike pitch, igniting a 10-run inning that ultimately put his dad on the photo stand, the Angels in the World Series and Kennedy in the record book, a perspective from which he reflected while preparing for the club’s workout Tuesday and said: “You know, I got about five steps out of the batter’s box after hitting that third home run and said to myself, ‘I can’t believe it, there’s no way that just happened.’ It was pretty surreal, pretty amazing, and such a big game for us, the city, myself.

“You see guys hit three home runs in a game during the season and the next day they’re playing another one of 162. I hit three and we’re going to the World Series, and that makes everybody in this clubhouse proud. Hopefully, it’s the start of a new kind of positive history.”

Certainly, it casts a new light on Kennedy’s personal history, and while three home runs in a game and four in nine postseason games might not mesh with seven during the regular season, his improvement at the plate and in the field has been a steady work in progress since his acquisition with the long-gone Kent Bottenfeld for Jim Edmonds on March 23, 2000.

This year, Kennedy was the AL’s seventh leading hitter at .312 (the third-highest average for a No. 9 hitter since 1974), and had the AL’s hottest single month when he hit .404 in August. Scioscia calls him the most improved Angel, largely because his advancement on defense while working diligently with coach Alfredo Griffin (“He should be paid overtime,” Kennedy said) has allowed him to remain in the lineup, getting close to 500 at-bats a year.

At 26, the former shortstop has slowly come to grips with a new league, new position, and playing at home under the shadow of the Edmonds trade, to which he has helped restore equality after the Bottenfeld bust.

“My only objective has been to prove to the Angels and myself that I belong in a big league situation,” Kennedy said. “The trade has never been an issue with me. I never set out to justify it. I also have no hard feelings toward the Cardinals for trading me.

“The timing simply wasn’t right in St. Louis. They needed a second baseman who could bat leadoff on a contending team, and I wasn’t ready. Walt Jocketty [the Cardinals’ general manager] is one of my favorite people in baseball and I’ll always be grateful to him for trading me into a situation where the manager has been supportive and patient and there has been a payoff for the club and myself.”

In other words, Kennedy said, he doesn’t delight in the Cardinals’ elimination from the playoffs. He has also learned -- although it is difficult at times -- to control his admitted frustration when Benji Gil, who was the first to greet and embrace Kennedy after his third home run Sunday, gets the second base assignment against some left-handers.

“At this point, egos are pretty much out the door,” Kennedy said. “We’re 3-0 against left-handers in the postseason, so I can’t argue with success. The way Mike uses the roster, everyone feels a part of it, everyone is ready to play. It’s been a fun ride, and the way Benji and I support each other makes it easier.”

Remarkably, Kennedy has received each of the balls he launched over the fence Sunday, costing him only a couple bats in exchange. One was retrieved by an Edison Field employee, another by the roommate of a family friend and the third was given him by a fan when he appeared on a TV show after “Monday Night Football.”

“Hard to believe,” he said. “It’s as if they fell into my lap.”

On the night of his record-tying accomplishment, Kennedy celebrated by hosting family and friends at his Yorba Linda home for pizza and “SportsCenter,” or as his dad said, “Isn’t that what everybody does every night?”

Well, not when the highlights keep rolling and it’s tough to get to sleep because, as Adam Kennedy said, “You tend to want to watch one more time.”

On Monday, reality hit for father and son. Adam Kennedy had to take his 9-month-old son to the doctor because of a cold.

Tom Kennedy got up to prepare a brown bag lunch for his return to the classroom and that tends “to bring you back to earth in a hurry.”

Better, however, than falling off a photo stand.