Jeff Kent - Maybe Not the Dick We Thought?

[kcmets]

Have to find a link.

[seawolf17]

=kcmets post_id=34538 time=1585789289 user_id=53]
Have to find a link.

[MFS62]

=seawolf17 post_id=34545 time=1585829625 user_id=91]
=kcmets post_id=34538 time=1585789289 user_id=53]
Have to find a link.

[Ceetar]

https://www.zelda.com/links-awakening/assets/img/home/hero-char.png>

[Edgy MD]

Now I feel like we need to check up on Kase.

[Willets Point]

He really left us hanging (no pun about being hung intended).

[kcmets]

Sorry, I thought I'd follow this up better but cannot at the present time.

I guess you had to be there (for parts of a WFAN interview with him)....

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I imagine Kent is exactly like the guy we saw on SURVIVOR. He was extremely confident in himself and openly manipulative but didn't seem to be capable of fully processing how other people would interpret those qualities, so in his own mind, he was just doing the right thing. I actually think that's how most athletes have to be but could see even in a room full of them Kent's singlemindedness might rub them the wrong way, and easy to imagine the conflict he'd have with Bonds and his massive but fragile ego.



I can't remember specifically why why fans see him as a dick. He was actually a pretty decent player and obviously had a long runway of getting better ahead of him when we tossed him overboard. But I wasn't paying rapt attention to the Mets in the Jeff Kent Era.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: I can't remember specifically why why [!Mets?] fans see him as a dick....

If I'm remembering correctly, it might be that he had what was considered an inappropriately gruff attitude for a rookie. Among other perceived sins, Kent flat out refused to participate in the traditional rookie hazing stuff, maybe even to the point where he threatened to come to blows with any teammate that tried to haze him.

[G-Fafif]

The closest Fran Healy ever came to expressing an opinion or producing an insight was when he intimated Kent wasn't popular among his teammates because “he wouldn't play their reindeer games.”



In 1993 and 1994, Jeff Kent was an antler player — a Met to hang our hat on. Not only was he setting hitting standards by a Met 2B, he had Kent's Kids out in LF, which was pretty good for a lightly established player to support. In an instant, it was almost universally agreed he was a dismal presence in all senses of the pejorative. It was quite the Met memory hole he fell down from there.

[Edgy MD]

In his first year, Kent publicly pushed back against the rookie hazing. When he was reminded that this was a standard rite of passage for all ballplayers, he was all, "I know — I already went through it all with the Blue Jays."



Aside from the self-serving logic (he was still a rookie), I'm glad somebody stood up to that stuff, and I'm glad it was someone whose career continued with the success he had, rather than getting blackballed. But I can see how a story like that getting out early in a player's tenure can feed a lazy narrative. I also guess arriving in return for David Cone didn't help people love him.



It's pretty ironic that, considering all the contemporary teammates of his that would be publicly implicated in anti-social incidents before that era ended, he was the one that got the reputation.



On the other hand, if the notion of him being an asshole was purely an illusion, it's an illusion that followed him around the league pretty well.



My favorite Kent association is that he and José Vizcaino were teammates on (I think) five different teams.

[kcmets]

Dollars to donuts I'm gonna get an email from F X Healy, he's a big lurkey turkey here still.

I should have taken notes during this interview, but there's still hope for this thread with

posters like G-F, batmag and JCL (and Edge who snuck in before I hit submit.)



I more remember Jeffries' clubhouse pariah thing more than Kent's. 1993 was a tough year

for me, lost my Mom young and her team sucked bhmc.

[G-Fafif]

Article in the Snooze today, tracking the insanity of sports talk radio in a given day sans sports, mentioned Kent was on the FAN calling Carlos Baerga “a turd,” which, I gotta say, detracts from the “not a dick” supposition.

[Frayed Knot]

Although it was later in his career, Kent also pretty much admitted to not being that big a fan of baseball. To him it was just something he was good enough at and therefore a great

way to make a living but the whole drama/history/devotion to the sport was lost on him. He was like the anti-ARod.

Nothing wrong with that actually and it's probably a more common attitude than many fans think ... they just don't like hearing it all that much.



From a player's standpoint, he also wasn't a 'one of the guys' type. He'd say that his best friend was his wife so that tends to steer you away from beers after the game with the fellas.

Again, that alone doesn't make him a bad guy but probably not all that popular in the clubhouse. Shortly after his in-dugout scuffle with Bonds, Mad Dog, a long-time Giants fan, said

that sources around that club told him that if the fight had been allowed to go on that most of the dugout would have been in Barry's corner ... and that's saying a lot.

[LWFS]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: I imagine Kent is exactly like the guy we saw on SURVIVOR. He was extremely confident in himself and openly manipulative but didn't seem to be capable of fully processing how other people would interpret those qualities, so in his own mind, he was just doing the right thing. I actually think that's how most athletes have to be but could see even in a room full of them Kent's singlemindedness might rub them the wrong way, and easy to imagine the conflict he'd have with Bonds and his massive but fragile ego. I can't remember specifically why why fans see him as a dick. He was actually a pretty decent player and obviously had a long runway of getting better ahead of him when we tossed him overboard. But I wasn't paying rapt attention to the Mets in the Jeff Kent Era.

JCL/LWFS Similarity Score: 97%



Honestly, he just seems to me like someone who doesn't get or like interacting with people with whom he isn't 100 percent alike (which came first, it's impossible to say).

[bmfc1]

I remember that after he was voted out of Survivor he gave a shot to Obama. In fact, I brought a clip:

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/YIQGWY0woy0https://youtu.be/YIQGWY0woy0[/YOUTUBE]

[kcmets]

The dick-meter is seriously swinging towards dick!!

[Edgy MD]

You never see people mount a dickmeter on their walls anymore. Once upon a time, they were everywhere. Then suddenly, they were all gone!

[Frayed Knot]

Edgy MD wrote: You never see people mount a dickmeter on their walls anymore. Once upon a time, they were everywhere. Then suddenly, they were all gone!

It's this damn political correctness era we live in!!!

[Ceetar]

Edgy MD wrote: You never see people mount a dickmeter on their walls anymore. Once upon a time, they were everywhere. Then suddenly, they were all gone!

Actually that's one of the new TikTok trends.