Los Angeles 2B Jeff Kent is a quite likely a first ballot Hall Of Famer. The truck-washing Hall Of Fame, that is. On the baseball diamond, however, the veteran motorbike enthusiast has a weird habit of alienating his Dodger teammates, whether its fellow warm’n’fuzzy type Milton Bradley, or the whatever-happened-to Hee-Seop Choi.
After being clobbered by the Rockies earlier this week, Kent’s pointed remarks about his younger teammates were not well received, writes the LA Times’ Dylan Hernandez.
Asked if it bothered him to be criticized by one of the team’s leaders, James Loney said of Kent, “Who said he was a leader?”
Said Matt Kemp: “If you take the younger guys away, do you have a team?”
Loney said the sizable generation gap in the clubhouse, and the fact there are few players in their prime to bridge the gap between young and old, probably resulted in some misunderstandings.
“That’s not just in baseball, that’s in life,” he said. “Definitely, things get misinterpreted. You really need to get to learn that person. A lot of people don’t want to take that time. A lot of people are too lazy to do that.”
Loney said Kent has never spoken to him about any of his points of criticism.
Asked if Little had adequately managed the personalities on the team, Loney replied, “I don’t really have anything to say on that.”
Kent refused to revisit the discussion for long on Friday. To a suggestion that he might want to clarify his vaguer statements, he replied, “If I wanted to clarify anything, I would’ve done it yesterday.”
He said he wouldn’t retract what he said, asking, “Are there no reasons we lost?”