It’s About Actions, Not Acting, for Garciaparra

The Dodgers are on the way to the playoffs, discounting Monday night’s bump in the road here, and the case can be made it’s Nomar Garciaparra who really got us going this year.

Deemed too old to play shortstop and an injury waiting to happen by most teams, Garciaparra has made two errors at first base while leading our guys in home runs and timely hits.

Down by two runs to start the ninth and Trevor Hoffman on the mound for the Padres, Garciaparra delivered a single to give the Dodgers a chance to rally. He just keeps on delivering.

So I’d like to know what Garciaparra thinks about all this. I’d like to know whether he ever allowed himself any self-doubts, or gave any thought to saying something interesting.

Well, I wished myself good luck and stopped by his locker before the first of three big games with the Padres.

I knew from experience Garciaparra would be pleasant before unleashing the cliches designed to keep the notebook empty, and the interview short. But I was determined to learn whether the performer on the field, who can be so charismatic, is really as dull off it as he appears in the clubhouse, or is it just an act?

“Oh my gosh,” Garciaparra exclaimed, and I’m not sure I have ever heard Garciaparra exclaim before. I didn’t even think it was possible.

“I’m not a good actor in any way,” he exclaimed again, hands waving in the air, and if he was trying to act now for my benefit, he was right, he’s no actor. “They had me go on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and I told them, ‘I can’t act.’ So no, I’m not acting.”

OK, so he was making a good case that he’s just dull, but I still couldn’t believe it. No way Mia Hamm falls for a dull baseball player -- even though she is a soccer player.

I told him I really wanted to know what made him so good, and pointed to Tiger Woods’ incredible PGA performance, and asked Garciaparra, “Wouldn’t you like the chance to ask Tiger what makes him so good?”

“No,” Garciaparra said, making it almost impossible to offer any other follow-up question beyond “You can’t be serious?”

“I can never be Tiger,” he said as if there was a limit to the number of words he can say each day.

“Wouldn’t you like to know what’s going on inside a fellow competitor?”

“It’s something innate, and can’t be explained,” Garciaparra said. “If Tiger could explain it, they’d bottle it and sell it. He’s just blessed.”

“Haven’t you ever asked Mia what drove her as a competitor?”

“No,” he said, and I can’t blame someone for not initiating a discussion about soccer.

I wondered, though, whether I was listening to an athlete who was constructing a wall around himself. If there’s no reason to learn more about Tiger, then there’s no reason to dig deeper into what makes Garciaparra go.

“There’s a wall there, all right,” said Manager Grady Little, who also worked with Garciaparra in Boston, “but who’s responsible for constructing that wall and how does it happen? This is someone who couldn’t even go out to dinner in Boston without being mobbed.

“He signs autographs before every game and signs as many as time allows. But it’s inevitable, he has to stop at some point and someone is going to be disappointed and think badly of him. It’s a tough spot a lot of these players find themselves in.”

Taking that a step further into the clubhouse, a player as productive as Garciaparra is going to be repeatedly and relentlessly hit with questions about what he’s doing and how he’s doing it. And if not blessed with the gift of gab ... sometimes that wall can appear in the form of an intimidating Jeff Kent, or an uncooperative Kenny Lofton -- although why anyone would want to talk to Lofton is beyond me.

Sometimes that wall goes up by just habit, or obsession -- if you have watched Garciaparra skip out of the dugout every day the same way or adjust his batting gloves between each pitch.

“When I was in Boston, my wife asked me to get Nomar’s autograph for a charity, and I told her I’d try,” Little said. “I knew I’d have to get it at just the right time, because he has this regiment and it’s the same every day. It’s the way he gets ready to play, and if you’ve noticed, he’s always ready to play.”

We prepare for games differently, of course. You have a thrilling player such as Garciaparra, and the assignment is to try to tap into that, while he spends his time tap-dancing around every query.

“I’m not going to use the word ‘courage,’ because that’s something the people in Iraq are using every day,” Garciaparra said, “but it does take a lot to go out there every day and do things some people think you can’t do on the baseball field.”

Now that he has explained himself and provided some insight -- without the aid of cliches, it’s incentive to talk to him some more, especially if we’re going to be going to the playoffs together.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Robert Ettenger, Casey Lee Ball distinguished professor of pediatrics head, division of nephrology medical director, pediatric kidney transplantation, Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA:

“ ... Do you have to be quite so adversarial toward Kevin Brown, Karl Dorrell, J.D. Drew and Jeff Kent? After all, Mattel Children’s Hospital is known for healing its patients, not for antagonizing them.”

I understand now why it’s a good idea to get a second opinion.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at

t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read

previous columns by Simers, go to

latimes.com/simers.