LEARNING CURVE WITH A MIX OF ROOKIES AND VETERANS, YOUNG - AND EVEN SOME OLD - DODGERS TRY TO SOAK UP KNOWLEDGE AS THEY HEAD INTO 2007.Byline: KEVIN MODESTI Staff Writer They're no longer rookies. But they're not yet veterans. The Dodgers' celebrated kids, the smooth faces of this new L.A. optimism, go into their sophomore season wondering when exactly the metamorphosis occurs. Does a day come, say the second or third time around the circuit -- or the fourth or fifth -- when a one-time callow rookie looks around a major- league ballpark and knows he belongs? Does a light bulb flash above his cap, and he suddenly grasps some essential truth only the established guys know? And while we're at it, what might one of those essential truths be? "If I had the answer, it would make my life easier," Andre Ethier
When the Dodgers convened at spring training for Year Two of their turnaround under general manager Ned Colletti Ned Louis Colletti, Jr. is the General Manager for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Colletti graduated from East Leyden High School in Franklin Park, Illinois and Northern Illinois University. Colletti began his Major League Career in 1982 with the Chicago Cubs. and manager Grady Little William Grady Little (born March 30, 1950 in Abilene, Texas) is a manager in Major League Baseball. He guided the Boston Red Sox from 2002 to 2003, and has been manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers since 2006. , they met across a generation gap. There are those kids, each younger than 25 when the Dodgers open Monday at Milwaukee: outfielder Ethier and catcher Russell Martin
As a senior at Defiance High School in 2003, pitched in 11 games and was 6-1 with a 1. . Then there are the grizzled griz·zled adj. 1. Partly gray or streaked with gray: a grizzled beard. 2. Having fur or hair streaked or tipped with gray. types, each 33 or older, most prominently: second baseman second baseman n. Baseball The infielder who is positioned near and to the first-base side of second base. Noun 1. second baseman - (baseball) the person who plays second base second sacker Jeff Kent Jeffrey Franklin Kent (born March 7, 1968 in Bellflower, California) is a Major League Baseball player for the Los Angeles Dodgers and a former MVP winner. Early career and left fielder Luis Gonzalez Luis Gonzalez is a common personal name that can refer to different people:
If it's not the widest demographic divide in baseball history, maybe even in recent Dodgers history, it does show two groups looking at each other in wonder. And most to the point, looking at each other in envy -- the kids jealous of the veterans' confidence and knowledge, the vets wishing they still had the kids' drive to prove themselves. At the end of Loney's initial 14-game stint in the majors last season, filling in for the injured Garciaparra, his sweet swing was producing an average in the low .200s and he was looking raw. Never more so than on April 21, early in a loss to Arizona, when Loney was doubled off third base after Odalis Perez popped up a bunt. A Dodgers executive recalling the play recently said it wasn't so much the baserunning snafu that screamed "rookie" but Loney's reaction -- head hung, shoulders slumping, arms flapping in exasperation. Loney was shipped back to the minor leagues the next day. "I kind of remember that," Loney said this month. "You don't want to make those mistakes. And if you do make those mistakes, you want to learn from them." After Loney came back in July, he hit .348 -- including playoffs -- and held his head high. When is the rite of passage rite of passage n. A ritual or ceremony signifying an event in a person's life indicative of a transition from one stage to another, as from adolescence to adulthood. ? When the kid graduates to a long-term contract? (A good technical definition of "established," but it would leave us with a four-paragraph story here.) When the kid finds younger kids asking him for tips? When the kid's shoulders no longer slump after bad moments, but shrug them off? That last milestone might be the crucial one: Every player goes through slumps and flops in the clutch. Only a veteran knows he'll always come out of them, and come through tomorrow. He's done it all before. "You have to learn not to try to do too much, to trust your ability," said Randy Wolf, the 30-year-old left-hander from ElCamino Real High in Woodland Hills and Pepperdine who was signed away from Philadelphia in November. "I think, as a young player, I tried to do too much. When you've been around a while, you have the luxury of looking back and knowing what's worked in the past." Martin, who hit .282 with 10homers and 65 RBIs in his first L.A. season and is the most established Dodgers kid, had 39-year-old catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. as a mentor early last year. "He'd tell me, 'You've got all the talent, just go out there and play,'" Martin said at his locker in Vero Beach. "Then I had guys like Jeff Kent and Nomar watching all my at-bats and giving me feedback, telling me, 'You're OK.' I came in last year and felt like my teammates accepted me. It helped me play better." Said Mike Lieberthal: "It's how you react when you struggle." Lieberthal (Westlake High), the longtime Philadelphia catcher who is the new veteran voice in Martin's ear, thinks it takes "at least three years before you're comfortable." Lieberthal notes with a smirk that, having signed with the Dodgers for one year plus a club option, "Now, at 35, I have to prove myself all over again." At least Lieberthal doesn't have the problem faced by the typical veteran, that too-comfortable feeling. "You should never get to the stage where you feel like you've been around long enough that you don't need to learn," Wolf said. "Whether you've been in the big leagues one year or 20 years." Said Ethier: "It's a lot of fun being a rookie and being on that learning curve. You have no room to be complacent if you're always out there striving to be successful." Which is why Juan Pierre, the Dodgers' new center fielder and hardest worker in spring training, refuses to be labeled a veteran even though he's 29 and a seven-year, er, big-leaguer. "I ain't there; I don't think I'll ever be there," Pierre said. "It's not in my mentality. You learn something new every year. That's one thing that's great about baseball." The lesson might be this: Carry yourself like you've been around the block a few times, but don't stop listening to directions. Bruce Froemming, the dean of baseball's umpires, said he hears veterans talk about rookies all the time. "A veteran will tell you during the season, 'That's a good guy. He asks a lot of questions. He wants to learn,'" Froemming said. "(But) sometimes a veteran will say, 'You can't tell that guy anything. He (thinks he) knows it all already."' Kemp is determined to be in that first group. "I learn from all these guys," Kemp said in the Dodgertown clubhouse. "Marlon (Anderson, the 33-year-old backup outfielder) helps me with focusing on the game, (scouting) the pitchers and stuff like that. At the end of the season, I was struggling a little bit. He reminded me I'm young and I've got a lot to learn. He got my head right. I know I've got the physical ability. It's the mental part I'm still working on." In the end, going from rookie to veteran is a little about putting up numbers for a few years and a little about feelings. "It's about success and confidence," Dodgers manager Grady Little said. "Which one comes first, I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. ." Little said he sees a new presence this spring in many of last year's rookies, more-mature carriage, greater confidence. Comfort? "None of 'em," Little said, "have got to that point yet." heymodesti(AT_SIGN)aol.com (818) 709-5337 CAPTION(S): photo, chart Photo: no caption (Dodgers in class) Illustration by Jim Thompson/Special to the Daily News Chart: YOUTH HAS NO AGE |
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