Kent’s Steady Hand Just What They Need

Jeff Kent awoke Tuesday to the sounds of his children out the back door, playing volleyball in the sands of Hermosa Beach, among the firefighters who assemble to play at those nets every morning.

Jim Tracy awoke inland, the Dodgers’ home opener upon him, a roster disjointed by injury and circumstance about him, and yet assured that his second baseman -- for now -- and cleanup batter was thinking the same thing he was.

He can be curt, and takes himself as seriously as a Hollywood bouncer with a clipboard, and has little time for the baseball foolish. But Kent is Tracy’s kind of guy, his kind of ballplayer, 14 seasons’ worth, going on 7,000 at-bats, going on 1,800 ninth innings like the one he played Tuesday afternoon.

“I like it very much,” Tracy said. “When I get up every morning and come to work later that afternoon, I don’t have to wonder which Jeff Kent is going to show up. I already know when I open my eyes.”

So far, seven games and five victories into the season, it has meant a .407 batter, a guy who has caught every ball hit at him and a few that weren’t, and in his first real game in Dodger whites scored the winning run from first base with two out in the ninth inning.

The Dodgers defeated the San Francisco Giants, 9-8, in part because Kent kept handing critical at-bats to Milton Bradley, took a hard-earned walk past a 3-and-0 swing-away sign, did the right thing, and participated in the mob that swamped Bradley at the end.

“Truthfully,” Bradley said later, “I wanted Jeff to hit it out.”

The at-bat went to Bradley. And in front of his mother, Charlena, and his sister, Veronica, who flew in from San Antonio just to see it happen, Bradley lashed the line drive that allowed them all to wonder if the season’s second week was going to be much like the first.

“I’m not a cleanup hitter,” Kent said. “I just like to be in a position, wherever it is, that has an effect on a ballgame. Wherever that is.”

He does happen to bat fourth. Three times after the fifth inning he came up with runners on base and the Dodgers in a terrible hole. He walked in the sixth to load the bases for Bradley, he grounded into a double play in the seventh to end a rally, and he walked in the ninth on seven pitches to force in a run and leave the rest to Bradley.

“That’s just a quality, veteran at-bat there,” Bradley said. “It takes experience to do that. When I’m up there, or other guys, we’re swinging at the first pitch. Because I’m anxious. I don’t have that calm, that been-there, done-that. He does.”

Tracy, perhaps, was thinking along with Bradley. When Giant closer Armando Benitez started Kent with three consecutive balls, all of them up in the strike zone, Tracy nodded to third base coach Glenn Hoffman. Let him swing. Have him tie it. Heck, have him win it.

In four at-bats in his career against Benitez, Kent had three hits, two of them home runs. On deck, Bradley was hitless in seven at-bats against Benitez, two of them strikeouts.

“If he wanted to take a whack and try to crush one, he had permission to do so,” Tracy said. “If you’re going to get beat, let’s go about it in this manner.”

Kent took strike one, a fastball down the middle. He took strike two, a fastball middle-in. Then he fouled a fastball straight back before walking on the seventh pitch, scoring the Dodgers’ sixth run, giving way to Bradley.

It wouldn’t be Kent’s moment. It would be the Dodgers’.

Later, Tracy pulled Kent aside, “just to make sure he understood what the third base coach was trying to tell him.”

Kent told him, “I was trying to figure out what he was trying to do with me.”

The plate appearance was gone, and the man who will protect Kent in the lineup danced across the infield, and maybe an odd collection of players and people got to know each other better, and Dodger Stadium was a pretty cool place to be.

“I completely understand how valuable players within your lineup are,” Kent said. “As a hitter, sometimes you have a tendency to be selfish. And you end up getting punched in the face more often than not, when you try to create something that’s just not there. I’ve learned over the years you can only do what they give you to do. If I understand that, that puts value on the guy behind me.”

Half-a-clubhouse down, Bradley, his hair matted around his temples, his smile pushed from trying times, said, “There’s no greater high than that.”

And then Jeff Kent left the ballpark, one of his children slung over his back like a knapsack. He’ll be back tonight.