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Cora Has Velvet Glove, Iron Will

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He is the begged, borrowed and stolen gem of the Dodger season, with silk hands and a duffel-bag heart.

Alex Cora pulls out his glove, the one he has used to stabilize the middle of the infield.

Printed neatly upon it, in big black letters, is the word, “Nieves.”

You see, it’s not his glove.

“After last season, I gave my gloves away to some relatives, so I had to borrow one for winter ball,” he says sheepishly. “I borrowed it from a guy named Jose Nieves. I liked it, so he said I could keep it.”

Alex Cora points to his bat, the one he has used to hit .341 in his last 25 games before Tuesday.

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Written neatly there are the words, “Shawn Green.”

You see, it’s not his bat.

“I tried out his batting practice bat last year, and it felt pretty good, so I just started using it all the time,” Cora says, grinning. “He’s our best hitter, so I could do worse.”

He’s the Dodgers’ dependable second baseman even though he never played there regularly until this season.

He’s one of the Dodgers’ smartest hitters just two summers after batting .217.

There is really no explaining Alex Cora, other than, in the first quarter of a Dodger season where so much could have gone wrong, he is the best example of everything that has gone right.

That, and he folds a mean towel.

“One of our best workers,” said David Dickinson, co-manager of the Dodger clubhouse.

When Cora says he will sweep the floor to be part of this team, believe it. Three springs ago in Vero Beach, after the veterans had retired to their golf games and beer runs, Cora would stick around the clubhouse to clean up.

Says Dickinson, smiling: “He put away socks, vacuumed the rug, everything.”

Says Cora, shrugging: “I had nothing else to do.”

When Cora says he will play any position to be part of this team, believe that, too. Earlier this year, he sprinted out and caught pitchers during their warmups between innings.

First up, Paul Quantrill, whose fastball popped out of Cora’s glove three times before he finally caught one.

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“With this guy having such soft hands, I thought, what the heck?” Quantrill remembers.

When Cora finally caught the fourth pitch, some fans behind home plate cheered.

“Real smart guys,” Cora remembers.

Then there was the occasion when he ran out with a catcher’s mitt only to realize that on the mound was nasty-throwing Kevin Brown.

“The whole time I was looking in the dugout thinking, ‘C’mon Lo Duca, get out here!’ ” Cora remembers.

That’s Cora; resilient enough to land in a lineup that didn’t want him, smart enough to reinvent a swing that didn’t work, as unabashed as the blue on his sleeves.

He wasn’t in the starting lineup in Tuesday’s 3-1 victory over the Colorado Rockies -- Manager Jim Tracy is still reluctant to start him against lefties -- but he still made a mark.

Early in the game, the video board showed different Dodgers talking about their favorite television shows. Most of them listed crime shows, caustic comedies, cool stuff, until the final player appeared.

It was Cora, and he said he liked, um, soap operas.

“I like watching them with my wife,” he announced to thousands.

The crowd tittered, but they love him.

They love the way he, like them, just keeps showing up.

“I just come here to work,” he says.

They love the way he, like many of them, understands what wins championships.

It’s not the home run or walk-off heroics. It’s the hit to the opposite field with the runners moving. It’s the smart baserunning. It is, as Cora says, showing up for work.

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He has done so this year with a .289 average, a .353 on-base percentage, a team-leading five hit-by-pitches, and only one error in his last 24 games.

When Tracy is asked about a favorite Cora moment, he mentions none of that. He mentions, simply, one good jump off one base that led to one run.

It was in Montreal two weeks ago, on a Sunday afternoon, the Dodgers leading 2-1 in the seventh inning with Cesar Izturis on second and Cora on third.

Dave Roberts hit a grounder to second baseman Jose Vidro and Cora ran on contact, timing his jump such that Vidro was startled into throwing wildly to the catcher.

“Only a really smart baserunner knows how to get just that sort of jump,” Tracy said.

Both runners scored, and the Dodgers eventually won, 4-3.

“It’s that kind of thing that he does, time and again,” Tracy said. “What he does, I know every championship has somebody just like that.”

In past years, this included the New York Yankees with Luis Sojo, the Arizona Diamondbacks with Craig Counsell, and the Angels with everybody.

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“I’m a student of baseball, and I understand that,” Cora said. “I want to be that kind of player.”

And when the Dodgers almost buried him this spring by handing the second base job to Joe Thurston?

For the first time since joining the organization in 1996 as a third-round draft choice from Miami, he spoke up.

“I don’t want people thinking that being a team player means you can’t get your point across,” he said. “I worried I wasn’t getting a chance, and I talked about it with Jim, and it was settled professionally.”

And, then, settled on the field, where Cora was indeed given a chance to back up last year’s .291 average, a 74-point improvement from his dismal 2001 season.

Now it appears Thurston will spend the year in Las Vegas while Cora will spend it in lights.

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Just not too bright, as evidenced by the indentation in his left ear.

“Yeah, I got an earring there, in college,” said the Dodgers’ antique stone.

“Wore it about two weeks. Wasn’t me. Haven’t worn it since.”

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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