All was bright and sunny at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday, when the media got to meet the newest edition of hope springs eternal.
There were no signs of the storm clouds gathering on baseball's horizon and scheduled to bring doom and gloom sometime today.
Andruw Jones Welcome Day beat George Mitchell Report Day by 24 hours.
For Jones' sake, that's nice. From all reports, the newest Dodger is a nice person who doesn't say a lot, doesn't make a lot of trouble, shows up every day and can play center field like a dream.
He played the last 11 and a fraction seasons with the Atlanta Braves and has played in two World Series, five National League Championship Series and 10 NL division series. That much winning alone will make him a curiosity in the Dodger clubhouse.
Dodger player to Jones in spring training: "So, Andruw, when they play those games in, like, the middle of October, what is that like? Is it colder? Do people still sit in the stands? Doesn't that kind of cut into your off-season golf?"
Jones batted .222 last season, with 26 home runs, after batting in the low .260s the previous two years and having 51 and 41 homers, respectively. The blip of 2007 prompted the Dodgers to structure a deal short on length, two years, but long on money, $36.2 million.
The short-term deal, of course, was spun by Jones and the Dodgers as merely a prelude to a longer deal when he gets back to those numbers of '05 and '06.
Jones said, "I want to be here for a long time."
Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti said, "I'd be more concerned about last year if his age were different. But at 30-31, we see him as in the middle of his career, not at the end."
One thing for oft-disappointed Dodger fans to cling to: Jones is the opposite of fragile. This is not a guy who depletes the trainer's supply of Ace bandages. He has never been on the disabled list, and as his agent, Scott Boras, points out, he is the only center fielder to play 1,300 innings a year 10 years in a row. Do the math. Nine innings times 162 games is 1,458 innings.
"Torii Hunter (the Angels' new acquisition in center field) did 1,300," Boras said. "Once."
Meow.
So, outside of not knowing how to spell his first name and having a low batting average last year in a career that already has Hall of Fame numbers, Jones would seem to be a bonanza for the Dodgers. It means that Juan Pierre will play left, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier will fight it out to seewho starts in right, and the Dodgers will have a nice surplus in the outfield.
