Love Him or Leave Him, Kent Is Dodgers’ Mainstay

He’s cold.

“I don’t see why you need to say hello to someone 365 days a year,” Jeff Kent says. “Shouldn’t once a week be enough?”

He’s crass.

“Yeah, I pushed Milton Bradley,” Kent says. “I’ve pushed lots of players.”

He’s caustic.

“One of my regrets about Game 6 of that World Series?” Kent says, referring to 2002. “Later, in the clubhouse, I should have started a fight with Barry Bonds, not because I wanted to fight him, but because we needed to stir things up.”

He’s cynical.

“I don’t know if I ever really liked baseball,” Kent says. “If I had my druthers, and could do something else, I’d probably be doing it.”

He has been the distant Dodger, the unlovable Dodger, the strangest of Dodgers.

The perfect Dodger.

Because, during a summer of minor league stunts, Jeff Kent has reminded us what it’s like to be a major leaguer.

For all he doesn’t do, there is one thing he has done this summer as much as any player in Dodger history.

He has played.

Man, has he played.

Every out, every inning, every bit of effort always from a 37-year-old body that many others would have long since shut down out of anger or apathy.

He admits that, even now, amazingly so, he has not yet met all the Dodgers who share his clubhouse.

But nobody has worked harder for them.

“Wait a minute, isn’t that what everyone is supposed to do?” Kent says during a lengthy interview about his difficult summer. “Play?”

Yes, but rarely like this, making a nightly stand for a bad and bedraggled team, harping through hopelessness.

Do you know that Kent will be the only Dodger this season to record at least 500 at-bats? Meaning, he’ll be the only one to play a full season?

“This team made a commitment, that is my commitment to them,” he says.

On a team devoid of clutch hits, he leads the major leagues with a .381 average with runners in scoring position.

“The only fun out there is winning,” he says.

In a steroid era where consistency ends when the juice dries up, Kent, an outspoken drug critic, could become the first second baseman in history to have eight seasons with 100 runs batted in, and the first second baseman to have four 30-homer seasons.

While everything around him could not be worse, his team beset by long injury absences and silly fielding errors and brain-dead at-bats, Jeff Kent has perhaps never been better.

If the dude wasn’t a first-ballot Hall of Famer before this season, he is now.

“A lot of times I’m standing out there and I’m thinking, ‘I’ve seen so many things this

year ... ‘ “ he says. “But I can’t get mad. Because, you know, they’re trying.”

We are talking in front of his locker after a night game, but only after I witness two of the many Kent trademarks.

First, he doesn’t emerge from the shower until nearly an hour after the game. He’s almost always the last player to leave because he spends so much time watching tapes or taking midnight swings.

“I may not like the game, but I respect it, and too many young kids don’t,” he says

Second, he carries a huge cooler to his locker, filled with ice and water for an outing with his children. The beach? An amusement park?

“The motorcycle races,” he says. “But don’t worry, I ain’t gonna ride one.”

This life-as-motocross personality has been misinterpreted by many, most recently Bradley, when he became the first player of color in Kent’s 14-year career to refer to him as a racist.

Not even Bonds, who physically tangled with Kent in the San Francisco Giant dugout and who has been unafraid to talk about race relations, has ever claimed Kent was prejudiced.

“When Milton said that, it was the first time in my career that my wife Dana has read something and cried,” he says. “That hurt. That really hurt.”

Yes, he has a perpetual farmer’s tan and sometimes wears white socks with blocky black tennis shoes and is considered completely un-hip and hopelessly un-cool.

And, yes, he blows off even those with three World Series rings. Just listen to Ricky Ledee.

“I always thought spring training was a time for a team to get closer, but when I first saw Jeff this year, he didn’t even acknowledge me,” Ledee says. “I thought, that’s really strange.”

But keep listening.

“He still doesn’t talk to many people, but, you know something, he’s taught us all a good lesson,” Ledee says. “We get paid to play and produce, not to kiss people’s butts. Even though he’s been slumping or tired or hurt, he’s played and produced.”

There is every indication that he will continue to do the same next season.

But, although he’ll never admit it, he may not want to do it here.

In search of a championship, Kent will certainly not want to endure another season hindered by Frank McCourt’s light wallet and Paul DePodesta’s growing pains.

If the Dodgers don’t make a bigger commitment to winning this winter -- and it seems they won’t -- then expect Kent to ask be to be traded.

If they aren’t careful, the biggest free-agent signing of DePodesta’s young career could turn into another Beltre-sized blunder.

“I will just say this,” says Kent, speaking carefully. “If they decide to go young next year, and I’m still here, then that will be a different situation than what they presented to me when I signed here.”

When Kent signed last winter, most Dodger folks thought they were getting a decent player but a surly one. Turns out, he is still a great player who has been surly only to those who don’t also aspire to be great players.

“I think I have been a little misinterpreted,” he says.

He has been tough on the media, but he has always shown up to talk.

“A lot of times, I think, if you guys are bothering me, you’re leaving some of the other kids alone,” he says.

He’s not a clubhouse leader, but he endorses the man in charge.

“I think your manager has to be your leader, and I think Jim Tracy is a fine manager,” he says. “He’s a great motivator, a real positive influence.”

What makes Kent angriest, he says, is when teammates turn their backs on the thing to which he has given his devotion.

“My main loyalty is to winning a championship,” he says. “I’m not sure everybody understands how hard that is.”

Kent knows, because, in 2002 with the Giants, he was six outs from his first title when the Angels swarmed back to stun the Giants in Game 6 before cruising past their stunned and fallen bodies in Game 7.

“I used to live Game 6 every day ... now it’s about once a week,” Kent says. “I’ll never forget how our locker room looked after the game. Everybody was in such shock. I should have done something to pull us out of it.”

Kent says that, while he had no desire to fight Bonds, he figured Bonds would understand.

“I would have fought Barry for no other reason than the fight would have taken everyone’s mind off what just happened,” he says. “And Barry would have known exactly what I was doing.”

Fast forward to this August, in Florida, when Milton Bradley, having sat out weeks because of a finger injury, is caught not hustling on the bases.

Three days earlier, Bradley had sought Kent’s advice on hitting, both in the trainer’s room and the on-deck circle.

When Kent sternly approached Bradley about his lack of hustle, Kent figured he would understand.

“I only push players to point of need, and, right then, we really needed Milton,” Kent says. “We needed all of Milton, and I told him that. He can be a great player, but we needed his best, we needed everybody’s best.”

Bradley was so upset with Kent’s comments, a couple of days later he lashed back, even against Tracy’s order, accusing Kent of being racist.

The funniest thing about Bradley’s midafternoon tirade was that he wondered how come Kent had not arrived at the park yet.

This guy who disappears for weeks talking about a guy who shows up more than anybody.

“I wasn’t mad at Milton, I’m still not mad at Milton,” says Kent, who noted they haven’t spoken since. “I still wish the best for him; he can be a great player.”

Who knows whether Kent will have a chance to be a great player for the Dodgers next year? Who knows whether he will even want that chance?

The only thing certain is, after spending a summer watching the curious one, the Dodgers have been the lucky ones.

“Hey, I’m getting ready to close on two motorcycle shops down in Texas, I’m good,” Kent says just before midnight, grabbing his cooler and his dirt-caked dreams and walking away.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.