WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — The front lawn surrounded the large frame house like a coat of deep green armor.
You could hold a football game from the street to the front door, so the man who crunched across that lawn in the middle of last winter had plenty of time to think.
But he stepped up on the tiny front porch and rang the bell anyway.
"Hello, can I see Kal Daniels?" he asked the astonished woman who opened the door.
"Kal!" yelled the woman. "It's your father!"
Daniels had not seen the man in 12 years. Their conversation lasted about 12 minutes.
"Hey, how are you doing?" Daniels said.
"I need some money," the man said.
Without even thinking, Daniels reached for his wallet and gave him what he wanted. Gave it to him in cash. Wished the man a happy holiday and said he hoped to see him soon.
"Haven't seen him since," Daniels said recently.
To understand the Dodgers' most enigmatic player, one need only understand this sort of betrayal, which has poked at the outfielder for most of his 27 years.
Loved by the fans but barely tolerated by some teammates, there is a reason Daniels mostly ignores both groups, preferring instead to attack opponents with his pure swing before retreating into a shell as thick as that front lawn.
Daniels avoids the contact to avoid the hurt.
"I'm a private person because the less people know about you, the less they can say about you," Daniels said. "People who don't know me, they think I'm tough, and that's fine. It's not true, but let them think that.
"People who do know me think I'm the best guy in the world. But those people are few. On purpose."
Daniels first felt that hurt while growing up in Warner Robins (population 43,726), a slow-moving Georgia town with an Air Force base and paper mills. When Daniels was 5, his father left him, his mother, and his two sisters.
"It was the four of us against the world," said Ella, his mother. "And little Kal had to be the man."
Said Daniels: "I don't care about my father because he wasn't around when I needed him. But it would have hurt me more not to give him the money."
Daniels also had to be the man when he began his major league career with the Cincinnati Reds in 1986 at 22. He thought the game would not be much different from when he played it under the tall pine trees of Plint Field in Warner Robins, but he was wrong.
His manager was the often-critical Pete Rose, the stares from the baseball-crazed community were constant, and in the end he hated even driving to the stadium.
After being traded to the Dodgers in 1989, he said, he finally began playing where he felt comfortable. But his teammates have not been entirely comfortable with him.
"On every team I've ever played for, there were one or two players, always one of the best players, who were not understood," said Jim Gott, a Dodger reliever who said he supports Daniels. "I guess on this team, Kal is one of those players."
One thing that everyone understands about Daniels is his sense of the dramatic. Last season, he was most conspicuous during the Dodgers' pennant drive, helping the team with a .354 average, nine home runs and 31 runs batted in during the final month of the season.
This season, he is batting .233 but is second on the team with 20 RBIs because of such things as a grand slam, a three-run homer and a two-run homer, all leading to victories.
"When I feel backed into a corner, that is when I come out the strongest," Daniels said.
Off the field is where Daniels is most often backed into that corner.
Teammates wonder about his aloofness. They wonder whether he cares about the team as much as he cares about himself.
When he drops fly balls in the outfield, which he has done on a couple of notable occasions this season, they wonder how much remorse he feels.
Daniels, playing in his second full season here, knows they wonder. If he didn't know it last year, it was confirmed for him this winter when reports surfaced that at least one Dodger veteran asked Vice President Fred Claire to trade Daniels instead of Hubie Brooks.
Because of Daniels' age and hitting potential, the Dodgers traded Brooks, who used his parting address to mention that "1%" of the Dodgers' roster could destroy the team.
Brooks adamantly refused to give names, and Daniels refused to speculate.
"Here is how I feel about all that stuff," Daniels said flatly. "If somebody would ever say something to my face, I would respond to it. But if a guy isn't man enough to put his name behind something, then I'm not even going to recognize it.
"Some people say good things about me, some people say bad things about me, but none of it bothers me. None of it."
Here are some facts about Daniels:
--He plays with a constant throb in his knees, which have undergone several operations. This affects everything from the way he runs after fly balls to the way he dives.
