IT TOUCHED A NERVE

By Steve Henson

July 11, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

The sun hadn’t yet risen above the dense stands of oak and hickory. Brad Penny set down his crossbow, started a campfire and rubbed his hands together. He looked into the flames and wondered where the fire in his belly had gone.

The Dodgers had traded for Penny a few months earlier, given up one of their most popular players to get him. But in his second start with his new team, Penny hopped off the mound yelping like a coyote cub who’d leaned into an electric fence.

Doctors said a nerve in his biceps had acted up, that it was the strangest thing they’d ever seen. All Penny knew was that he couldn’t pitch.

The season over and nothing ahead but hunting and fishing in the hills surrounding his eastern Oklahoma home, he was terrified of losing what he’d taken for granted all his life -- country hardball.

Less than two years later Penny will take the mound as the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star game. Worries about his health are over and he’s the ace of the Dodgers’ staff with a 10-2 record and 2.91 earned-run average.

As for that much-criticized trade, it’s at least a wash, and Penny curls his lip in a wry smile at the mention of it. His catcher tonight will be Paul Lo Duca, the fan favorite the Dodgers shipped to the Florida Marlins as the centerpiece of a six-player deal.

LoDuca eventually moved to the New York Mets and the other players have receded and scattered. The Dodgers have a new catcher of the future.

And they still have Penny, whose transformation from indolent underachiever to hard-working stopper has justified the three-year, $25-million contract extension the Dodgers gave him a year ago.

“He crossed the bridge from being a young player with potential to being a guy who knows he’s counted on to perform,” said Roy Smith, the Dodgers’ vice president of scouting and player development.

“He’s matured, and he’s delivering.”

The makeover began with a shock, the one in Penny’s biceps that ended his Aug. 8, 2004 start in the second inning. He tried to come back six weeks later but felt the pain again.

The injury may or may not have had anything to do with his flagging work ethic, but he blamed himself anyway, sitting around the campfire on cold fall mornings vowing to get his 6-foot-4, 275-pound body in shape.

“I got lazy and the injury woke me up,” he said. “It makes you sick lying in bed at night or sitting with a fishing pole in your hand wondering.”

Penny began working with personal trainer Mark Verstegen and nutritionist Sari Mellman. He reported to spring training in 2005 with a new look -- and a more determined outlook.

Still, he was uncertain whether the nerve injury would reoccur. He didn’t pitch with complete confidence until May, and about the time he hit his stride, the Dodgers lost their footing, tumbling in the standings.

Penny didn’t respond well to the team’s demise. He’d signed his extension in June, and when the losing began, his attention span suffered. His passion became buying thoroughbreds, and he spent so much time in the clubhouse poring over bloodstock auction guides that one day a teammate walked by and said, “If the opposing lineup was on that sheet, he’d throw a no-hitter.”

Penny eventually accumulated a stable of four horses, including one early success story, Excess Temptations. He bought the thoroughbred for $50,000 and it has earned about $115,000 in three victories.

But after leaving his last start Sept. 21 at Arizona after only 10 pitches because of muscle tightness in his right forearm, Penny needed another round of early-morning therapy sessions at his 2,200-acre ranch near Bartlesville, Okla.

He decided the Dodgers’ won-lost record shouldn’t have an impact on his focus. And he’d seen other pitchers lose their edge after getting big contracts. He didn’t want to join that crowd.

“The security is great and it makes it easier to pitch,” he said. “But how often do you see a guy sign for a lot of money, then not perform until it is the last year of his contract? It makes you wonder.”

Penny looked at the back of his baseball card and realized he hadn’t accomplished a whole lot yet. Sure, he’d won two games in the 2003 World Series and celebrated the championship with the rest of the Marlins. But his lifetime record was barely over .500 and his earned-run average a pedestrian 4.00.

“I signed a contract for millions, and that makes me want to be better, do everything I can to be better,” he said.

His off-season regimen became even more intense and again he reported to spring training with fresh motivation. Penny vowed to earn every cent of his paycheck. He’d leave horse racing at the track.

He’d become the Dodgers’ horse.

Penny is an admitted loner most comfortable around long-time friends and his family -- his dad rode a front-end loader at a Tulsa sand plant and worked in sales for a tobacco company.

Yet he has assumed a leadership role with the Dodgers, reaching out to rookies and foreign players, basically anyone he believes needs help feeling comfortable.

Last season, Penny took rookie outfielder Jason Repko under his wing and was Korean first baseman Hee-Seop Choi’s closest pal. This year he befriended relief pitcher Takashi Saito in spring training, taking him to a karaoke club, and invited rookie catcher Russell Martin to live at his house rent-free. He has also lent a car to assistant trainer Ichiro Tani for the season.

“If I was to go and play in Korea or Japan, would it be fun?” Penny said. “Not knowing the language? Probably not. So I try to loosen them up.

“With the rookies, your first year is weird. You are making some money for the first time and don’t know what to do. If I’m able to help a guy save some money and make his transition easier, that’s great.”

Penny has an eclectic group of friends, including ultimate fighting champion Tim Sylvia and actor Jason Biggs. But he’s still country, right into the All-Star news conference Monday when he sat with honorary presidents Bill Giles and Jackie Autry wearing a brown flannel shirt, blue jeans and a cap.

His best buddy since third grade has been John Oldham, who lives on Penny’s ranch, clearing brush and planting feedlots for the whitetail deer that will become off-season targets along with wild turkey and quail.

Oldham was never concerned that the big city would change Penny, who recently moved from Manhattan Beach to Calabasas in search of peace and quiet.

“Our dads would take us fishing and hunting when we were kids,” Oldham said. “When we got a little older, me and him would grab our poles and go to a fishing hole. There were probably 10 to 15 different ponds we could get to.”

Penny signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks out of Broken Arrow High in 1996 and was traded to the Marlins three years later, becoming a fairly large fish in a mostly empty stadium when he broke into the big leagues in 2001.

“I’d pitch on Sunday afternoon in front of 2,500 people,” he said. “In L.A., it’s electric. The fans are into it. It’s a baseball city.

“In Florida you never felt that except when we were in the playoffs. I’d lose the butterflies and get complacent.”

Penny’s best moments came after he’d been riled up. He was shelled in Game 2 of the 2003 NL championship series against the Chicago Cubs, and Manager Jack McKeon pulled him from the rotation.

“I pitched good all year and they took me out,” Penny said. “I was mad, really mad. But it was good for me because it pulled the best out of me.”

Penny beat the Cubs in relief in Game 7 and beat the Yankees twice in the World Series. Anger has occasionally fueled him with the Dodgers as well, and also caused embarrassment.

He regrets yelling at Grady Little when the manager pulled him before he could record the last two outs in the fifth inning to qualify for a victory against Atlanta in May. Penny cooled off by fishing at comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s lake and apologized to Little.

“In my situation, in the role I want to have with this team, I can’t do that,” he said. “I have to respect the manager’s decision and I should have handled it differently.”

There are no hard feelings from Little’s end.

“I don’t regret it happening because Brad learned something about how to behave in public,” he said. “He gets so totally into trying to win that he’s tough for a lot of people to communicate with. I’ve never seen a guy who is a bigger competitor the day he pitches. He wants to be good so bad.”

Penny can be tough for a manager to read. He’ll fight to stay in a game until he believes he’s had enough. Then he shoots a look into the dugout like a man looking for a lifeboat.

“That big body works hard,” Little said. “There’s not one pitch where he paces himself. And when he’s done, he’s done.

“I respect any pitcher who comes and tells me when he’s had enough. Brad has proven he’s a grown man who wants to be a crucial part of this ballclub. He wants to take us to the finish line.”

Once the season is over, Penny will get back to the campfire and let his thoughts settle. These days, any unfinished business will churn in his gut.

“Whether it’s an injury or a loss or just not getting to the next inning,” he said, “I don’t want it to be a situation where I look back and say something happened because I didn’t work hard enough.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Starters

Brad Penny will become the 10th pitcher in Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers history to start in an All-Star game

(* two games were played from 1959 to 1962):

Brad Penny: 2006

Hideo Nomo: 1995

Fernando Valenzuela: 1981

Don Sutton: 1977

Andy Messersmith: 1974

Don Drysdale: 1959, ‘62, ‘64, ’68

Sandy Koufax: 1966

Johnny Podres*: 1962