Jeff Kent “The Enemy of Your Enemy”
On December 16, 2002, after thirty-nine days stranded on a remote Philippine island, Denise Stapley—middle-aged sex educator and outdoor enthusiast from Iowa—was crowned the winner of “Survivor” season twenty-five. Stapley, who is still the oldest woman to ever win “Survivor,” bested runner up, Michael Shupkin—convicted financial scammer and child sex offender—and second runner up Lisa Welchel—author and church goer who famously once starred as Blair Warner in “Facts of Life.” But of the eighteen contestants on “Survivor” that season—many of whom were duplicitous and at least one of whom was a bonafide criminal—none irked teammates and audiences like ninth place finisher, Jeffrey Franklin Kent.
How could they? Denise, Michael, Lisa and the fourteen other castaways were merely amateurs. Jeff Kent, on the other hand, was a professional irritant. The former N.L. MVP and five time All Star was perhaps the most disliked player of his generation. And I use the word “disliked” rather than “hated” (though he was surely also hated) because Kent excelled at very specific, cold war, passive aggression more than he engaged in outright hostile conflict. However, because even Cold Wars do occasionally simmer into something more pugnacious, Jeff Kent had no choice but to lash out after day nineteen’s tribal council.
Upon being outmaneuvered and outvoted, Kent famously closed the episode with a forceful but not entirely sensical diatribe about how much money he made in the Majors and about how he didn’t need the money but he really wanted the money but also how Obama was gonna take forty percent of the money anyway and how that sucked and about how he was a champion but how he was also a World Series loser. As a closing statement for his almost three weeks on the island, it was patently strange. But considered alongside his MLB career, it tracked perfectly. Jeff Kent had always been blessed with physical gifts that were outpaced only by his extraordinary lack of self-awareness.
Tales of Kent’s unique “arroignorance” (a word I just made up but which seems to effectively describe Jeff Kent) go all the way back to the Eighties when, while in high school, he was dismissed from the school’s baseball team for refusing to switch positions. His defiance cost him athletic scholarships but only barely deterred Kent who—on account of his stellar academic performance—was able to sidestep into an academic scholarship to Cal Berkeley. While at Cal, he had one very good and one injury plagued year, but flashed enough talent to get himself drafted in the twentieth round by the Toronto Blue Jays.
Three years later, but just sixty-five games into his MLB career, Kent was traded along with a player to be named later to the New York Mets for ace David Cone. And while in New York he did distinguish himself as an adequate defensive second baseman with much more than adequate offensive pop, he also established himself as a humorless wank. In his first season with the club he refused the traditional rookie hazing by arguing that he’d already been properly pranked The Blue Jays and therefore did not qualify for the rookie (mis)treatment. Needless to say, teammates and fans of the fifth place club were not amused by young Kent’s noncompliance.
Though Kent’s prospects improved, his reputation did not. By the time of the 1995 strike shortened season, the second baseman was on the cusp of All Star status—slugging twenty home runs and sporting an OPS around .800. At the same time, The Mets were improving, gutting their way to second place in their division. Unfortunately, in 1995, second place in the NL East was also twenty-one games behind the world beating Atlanta Braves. More unfortunately, Kent continued to draw the ire of fans and teammates alike. The best Met that season was also the most overpaid and under-appreciated Met that season. Bobby Bonilla was hitting. 325 and slugging .600 though eighty games, but his massive contract and general disinterest landed him in a late summer trade to The O’s. The fourth best player on that Mets’ team was Carl Everett—perhaps the most unpredictable player in all of baseball. Everett stridently refuted the existence of dinosaurs and, years later, was arrested for holding a gun to his wife’s head. An undeniable talent, Everett soiled his way through the league, alienating players and fans along the way. And yet, in 1995, he was probably more liked around Shea than his team’s third best player—Jeff Kent.
Midway through the summer of 1996, Kent was traded to The Cleveland Indians, where he hit modestly but annoyed majorly. And so, during the offseason, Kent was again traded—this time to The San Francisco Giants, where he both blossomed and soured. Alongside the Barry Bonds,—the slugging, running, intentionally walking, video game centerpiece of the club—Kent helped lead the team to six straight winning seasons. Moreover, while in the Bay, Kent averaged thirty home runs with a hundred RBIs and a .300 average year in and out. Aside from Rogers Hornsby, no second baseman had ever combined average with power in the way that Kent did with The Giants. And yet, to this day, Jeff Kent is perhaps less remembered for his offensive prowess than as Barry Bonds’ most offensive antagonist.
For roughly twenty of the twenty-two years he played, Barry Bonds was the greatest player in the game. At the same time, he also appeared to be the loneliest. From the outset, Bonds stood apart—he was the son of an MLB All-Star, and a five tool phenom who had few peers and seemingly fewer friends. Giants fans worshipped him, but to almost everyone else—opposing players, fans and certainly sports writers everywhere—the game’s greatest talent was also the game’s loneliest villain. He was, by some margin, the greatest heel in the sport. You couldn’t not marvel at his dominance, but his general affect—with reporters but seemingly also with teammates—had a strong whiff of misanthropy. Bonds exuded some version of, “I’m smart enough to recognize that most people don’t like me and that’s fine because I don’t like most people.”
Bond’s prickly armor was always one dumb question or minor slight away from melting into seething hostility. Which is why he insulated himself from journalists and teammates alike. Bonds’ locker was actually four lockers, plus an oversized recliner, a television and a coterie of handlers and trainers. His few friends in the game were living legends—Rickey Henderson and Tony Gwynn—rather than actual teammates. And unlike other historically divisive icons—Ted Williams, Reggie Jackson, etc.—there are surprisingly few “other sides” to the media’s depiction. No tales of Bonds’ secret kindness. No hidden friendships. No grinch’s heart. But whereas most everyone tolerated Bonds’ malevolence as the cost of being the best, there was one man would not abide. And that man, unfortunately for both, was Bonds’ teammate—Jeff Kent.
There’s an ancient Sanskrit proverb that goes something like: “The enemy of your enemy is your friend.” It’s a useful concept for movie Westerns and geo-politics and, maybe most of all, professional sports. It’s the logic that underpins how North Carolina fans can root hard for Duke’s opponents in March and why Red Sox fans cheer for anyone who’s playing The Yankees in October. By this same logic, Jeff Kent should have been adored in proportion to the ill will Bonds earned. And yet, it didn’t quite work out that way. When Kent bested Bonds in the 2000 NL MVP voting, the award was interpreted as both slightly undeserving (possibly true—Todd Helton, who finished fifth should have won) and a vote against Bonds (probably true) rather than a celebration of Kents’ extraordinary achievements. And more to the point, in 2002 when Bonds was filmed in the Giants’ dugout choking Kent, the aggression was presented not as an attack by an assailant (Bonds) against a victim (Kent) but as a tussle between the greatest, but most easily angered player in the game, and his excellent, but obviously infuriating teammate. In other words, all of sports media implied what knowing fans had surmised—that Kent probably deserved it.
Months after the “Slugout in the Dugout,” Jeff Kent signed with the Houston Astros, where he enjoyed two excellent, but not “batting behind Barry Bonds level” seasons. Craig Biggio, a local legend and fifteen year veteran with the club, agreed to move from second to center field to make room for Kent—a selfless gesture which writers were quick to contrast with Kent’s intractability. Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, without Kent, Bonds was named MVP in 2003 and 2004 (just as he’d been in 2001 and 2002). No longer the enemy of the game’s greatest enemy, Kent was away from the glare but still unable to conjure any warmth. As he entered his fourteenth MLB season, he was ostensibly a very productive bat for hire—a power hitter at a position where power was in low supply and high demand. Always in the MVP conversation but no longer a serious contender for the award, thirty-six year old Kent had reams of gaudy stats and loads of prestigious awards, but zero rings and what seemed like an equal number of friends.
Which is why, by 2005, Kent was on the move again—this time back home to Los Angeles, where he joined a fledgling Dodgers squad “led” by Milton Bradley. A hometown guy himself, Bradley had eclipsed Carl Everett as the game’s most promising but unpredictable player. You almost never knew what he was going to say or do. And when his playing days were over, Bradley descended into serial spousal battery, a heinous pattern that landed him in prison on more than one occasion. But even then—back in 2005—he was not an especially lovable figure. And yet, he was somehow more likable than Jeff Kent who, during his first season in L.A. continued put up stellar numbers—twenty nine homers, one hundred and five RBIs and a 133 OPS+—but who again found himself as the least popular player on a team which also featured a historically unpopular teammate.
Predictably, the two could not safely co-exist. During the summer of Kent’s very first season with the club, Bradley unloaded: "If you're going to be the leader of the team, then the need to mingle with the team and associate with the team. I mean, you can't have your locker in the corner, put your headphones in and sit in the corner reading a motocross magazine. He's in his own world. Everybody else is in this world." Bradley was traded that offseason and Kent would go on to have three very good but not great seasons for good but not great Dodger teams. But in the summer of his last run with the club, seemingly in a delayed retort to Bradley as much as anyone else, but also in an effort to burn every remaining bridge, Kent let the L.A. Times know how he really felt about his teammates: “I don't hang out with the guys—never have. I don't go out drinking, look at porn, have a girlfriend or get divorced—so I'm selfish."
And that was it. After nine hitless post-season at bats in the Fall of 2008—with a resume that included three hundred seventy-seven home runs, five hundred sixty doubles and one thousand five hundred eighteen RBIs, many admirers but zero documented friends—Jeff Kent retired. And with the exception of two ill fated reality competition show performances (“Superstars” in 2009 and the aforementioned “Survivor” in 2012), he has maintained a very local, mostly low profile life in and around the Texas Hill Country. There he has helped raise his family, opened a couple ATV dealerships, bought and shuttered a small country club, supported stricter P.E.D. testing in baseball and opposed same sex marriage.
Five years after his retirement, Kent’s name first appeared on the ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Initially, his vote share hovered in the teens, far below the seventy-five percent required for enshrinement. In time, as writers wrestled with suspected (or confirmed) P.E.D. users and their juiced stats, Kent’s case received more sober consideration. His vote share inched his way into the thirties and then, in his final year of eligibility, closer to fifty percent. But 46.5% was as near as he ever got. And while in the future the Eras Committee can still revisit his candidacy, the dispassion for Kent’s candidacy begs the question: Why?
Of the roughly thirty players elected during Kent’s decade of eligibility, several have similar or lesser resumes. Tony Oliva, Harold Baines and Ted Simmons—each exceptional players in their own right—did not sustain the excellence of Jeff Kent. In fact, many of the inductees from the last twenty years—from Jack Morris to David Ortiz—have lower career WAR than Kent, who by almost any standard, was a better hitter than Hall of Fame second basemen Roberto Alomar, Ryne Sandberg and Craig Biggio. Purely as a hitter, Kent has few historical equals.
Which of course, brings me to the strongest case against Jeff Kent—his defense. At his best, Kent was not the fielding equal of Biggio, and he was not in the same league of Sandberg or Alomar. On the other hand, reports of Kent’s defensive liabilities have been somewhat exaggerated. Kent’s well above average range cost him efficiency. And while he was far from spectacular, he was a better than adequate fielder. Though long and rangy, Kent was not fleet of foot—in the field or on the bases. As a result, his advanced stats have a whiff of one-dimensionality. The cases for Alomar and Sandberg—not to mention Scott Rolen—surge past Kent on the basis of defensive prowess. Additionally, because he was a relatively late bloomer (Kent did not play a full season until he was twenty-five), Kent’s career stats, while grand, fall just short of undeniable. So while there are twenty second basemen in the Hall of Fame and while Jeff Kent is arguably among the ten best hitters to ever play second base, the case for his induction is—at the very least—debatable.
Except, no one is really debating the issue. Boston fans lobbied hard for Jim Rice and continue to do so for Dwight Evans. Pirate fans made the push for Dave Parker. Rockies fans cheered on Larry Walker and Todd Helton, while Twins fans rooted for Joe Mauer and Tony Oliva. But who, aside from Jeff Kent, is making the case for Jeff Kent? The one time Willie Mac Award Winner quickly wore out his welcome in The Bay. In Houston he could never compete with The Killer B’s. And in L.A. he managed to squander any hometowngood will. Giants’ beat write, Henry Schulman, once described Kent as having a “serial killer smile”—an ungenerous but not inaccurate slight that explains the actual reason Jeff Kent is not in the Hall of Fame. It’s not for lack of WAR or for his defensive liability, but because he was perceived to be ”off.” Jeff Kent was a lone wolf, not to be trusted. In truth, very few writers, fans and—I suspect even—players knew the real Jeff Kent. But they knew that he was the enemy of their enemy, and yet, still not their friend.