Need an Enigma? Go See Kal : Dodger Is Loved in Hometown, but Not by Some Teammates

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.

“When I took a look at his X-rays when we acquired him from Cincinnati, I could not predict much longevity for him,” Dr. Frank Jobe, Dodger medical director, said in an interview late last season. “There was so much damage in there, I just didn’t know how long he would be able to hold up.”

“Arthritis,” Daniels said, shaking his head. “That’s what I’ve got in there now. I just take pills and hang with it. But don’t let anybody ever say I don’t play in pain.”

--Not everyone considers him to be a strange guy.

He is such a beloved figure in his Georgia hometown that he may be the only Dodger with his own nationally organized fan club. For $20, you can get a Kal Daniels T-shirt, autographed card and newsletter.

“If only people could see what he is like here,” said Lucile Allen, a former bank teller who met Daniels when he cashed his checks with her and has since founded his fan club. “He does so much for his family and close friends. I’ve never seen a group of people so tight.”

One year, he bought his mother, Ella, a luxury car for Mother’s Day. Another year, for Christmas, he bought her that five-bedroom house off a winding, tree-lined road in Warner Robins.

When he comes home during the winters, he rarely leaves that house. He lets his 12-year-old niece pitch to him in the back yard--”I struck him out once,” Keshia said--and plays basketball with his nephews.

Daniels buys shoes for the local Little League team, bowls with the neighborhood kids and even cruises the malls looking for old friends.

“I think he really misses his hometown,” said Mike Baxter, a childhood friend. “When he comes back, it’s like he never left. He seems so happy here.”

Daniels misses it so much, he has flatly stated that when he becomes a free agent after the 1992 season, he will phone the Atlanta Braves about a possible job.

“One day, I will play in Atlanta,” Daniels said. “In my mind, I will definitely play there, because I want to be near my family . . . my little circle.

“You know what I think about? Getting married, and having a picket fence and a dog in the back. People might not believe it, but that’s what I want.”

His mother had hoped it would be easier for him. That is one of the reasons she named him Kalvoski.

She had endured a difficult labor before his birth, and when he was finally born, she was too exhausted to remember any of the seven possible names she had picked out.

“I’m laying there all tired, and the nurse says, ‘Why don’t you name him Kalvoski?’ ” Ella recalled. “I said, ‘What?’ She said, ‘It means, ‘the great one.’

“I thought that sounded good to me.”

Living in a neat brick-and-frame bungalow on a quiet rural street, Daniels was never poor. His mother worked two jobs, in a clothing store and a bowling alley, to make sure of it.

But being the only male was never easy. Just when Daniels would feel comfortable with that role, something would come along to remind him that he could still be a helpless child.

Like the time he thought he had won the Georgia “Punt, Pass and Kick” contest, a youth football competition.

“All of a sudden, this other kid, who shows up late, gets another kick,” Daniels recalled as if it were yesterday. “I think his father had some influence or something. And this kid beats me with that kick.

“There went my spot in the national competition. There went my chance to be on television and my chance to show off at a real pro game. I was crushed.”

With no father to fight for him, Daniels rebelled by carrying all of his football equipment to his coach’s house, laying it on the front porch and attaching a note with two words: “I quit.”

“That was Kal,” said the coach, Herkey Baxter. “Some things just set him off.”

Another time that he felt betrayed was during a high school baseball game, when he thought an umpire had cheated him out of a call but nobody would listen. He was thrown out of the game early, then waited in the parking lot for the umpire.

“I was sitting on a car, waiting for the game to end so I could beat up the umpire,” Daniels said. “He came out, I came toward him . . . and it took a bunch of parents to separate us.

“When I get pushed, something is going to happen. A man can only take so much.”

But even then, his soft spot showed. While playing a game of home run derby with Mike Baxter, Herkey’s son, the talented Daniels would often let the other boy win.

“To this day, I know he would miss hitting a home run on purpose,” Mike Baxter said. “That was just the way he was.”

Judging from the way he deals with his family today, he is still that way.

Daniels talks to his mother and two sisters, Faye and Angie, at least three times a week. Anytime he is injured, he calls them as soon as he leaves the field so they will not worry.

“The person we read about in the newspapers and the person we know is so different, we laugh about it,” Faye said. “The person we know isn’t nearly so tough as people think . . . although probably nobody will ever believe it.”

Also quite different is the scene in Atlanta Stadium when the Dodgers are in town.

His friends and family make the 90-minute drive to see him. He brings them down to the box seats next to the field and visits with them immediately after the game, while still in uniform.

He spends his entire time away from the park with his family during his Atlanta trips, usually visiting with them at the house of an aunt who lives in the area. This was where family members said the real Kal Daniels appeared last year.

After one of the Dodgers’ games against the Braves, his family held a surprise birthday party for him there. He was so overwhelmed, while reading the greeting cards, that he began to cry.

“I wasn’t reading the cards, I was just pretending to read the cards,” Daniels explained. “I couldn’t read them because my eyes were too watery. Big old tears coming down my face.”

He paused.

“Seriously, man,” he said softly. “Real tears.”