Former Giants manager Dusty Baker, left, stands with former player Jeff Kent before a baseball game between the Giants and the New York Yankees in San Francisco, Friday, March 27, 2026.
Jeff Chiu/AP
GIANTS 2/C/22MAY97/SP/MACOR giants 2nd baseman Jeff Kent goes airborn to throw out Rockies runner Jonh Thomson in the 3rd inning. Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor; BASEBALL; AND PAPER SAYS PHOTO BY JEFF CHIU
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GIANTS KENT1-C-03MAY00-SP-MAC San Francisco Giants v. New York Mets. Giants Jeff Kent, right, returns to home plate the hero with his three run blast in the 11th to beat the Mets 8-5. by Michael Macor/The Chronicle
MICHAEL MACOR
Jeff Kent smiles as talks with Jared Oliva (56) after he joined the Giants for their spring training game between the San Francisco Giants and the Chicago Cubs at Scottsdale Stadium in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026. Kent’s number will be retired in August.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
One of the quirkier things about Jeff Kent’s otherwise fairly standard ballplayer résumé is that he was a contestant on “Survivor,” appearing in the 2012 edition of the program that took place in the Philippines.
Fourteen years ago, that seemed like a funny blip for the often prickly Giants second baseman.
From the vantage point of this week, it seems like an omen. A harbinger of things to come.
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Kent is the ultimate Baseball Hall of Fame survivor. After 10 unremarkable years on the ballot, where his vote total never rose above 46.5%, far below the 75% mark required for election, he thought he’d been voted off the Cooperstown island.
But he found the ultimate hidden immunity idol, the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee. Last December he was selected overwhelmingly — on 14 of the 16 ballots cast by the group composed mainly of Hall of Famers and MLB executives. He was the only player elected from a star-studded list that included his former teammate and home run record holder Barry Bonds, who received fewer than five votes.
GIANTS4-29JUN02-SP-DF Barry bonds high fives Jeff Kent after Kent hit a 2 run homer in the 1st inning as the SF Giants beat Oakland Athletics 5-3 at Network Associates Coliseum in Oakland. Kent also got an RBI in the 9th inning on a single. CHRONICLE PHOTO BY DEANNE FITZMAURICE Ran on: 04-11-2010 Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent were often at odds. Shawon Dunston said it &quo;brought the team closer together.&quo;
DEANNE FITZMAURICE/SFC
Kent, a former MVP and five-time All-Star, will be enshrined in Cooperstown on Sunday. And he still sounds surprised by the reprieve.
“I had painted a picture that I accepted, which was that it’s probably just not going to happen,” Kent said on a recent Zoom call. “I’m OK with it. You know, it’s not going to make my life much better anyway, so I’ll just deal with it.”
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But when he got the call last December, he admitted to bursting into tears. He has been honest about feeling overwhelmed by the coming induction.
“It’s a bigger emotional deal than I ever thought it was going to be,” he said. “I still tear up talking about it, and I’ve tried to figure out why. Is it because of the game? Is it because I finally got in?
“Why are my emotions so attached to this?”
Kent’s vulnerability around the Hall of Fame is something he tried not to exhibit as a player. He had his moments when he could be affable, and generous. For example, Kent has continued to be financially committed to Cal, his alma mater. He and his wife Dana started the “Woman Driven” fund in 1998, donating $500 for each run he drove in, with matching corporate funds, to go toward scholarships for women, in honor of his daughter Lauren. After he retired, Kent, who was a walk-on to the Cal baseball team, endowed a scholarship for a Cal female athlete, preferably a walk-on.
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“When I retired, I endowed that scholarship; so there’s a scholarship every year for forever, until this world comes to an end or Cal decides to go use it somewhere else,” Kent told the Chronicle’s Susan Slusser. “I get notes every year from one female walk-on athlete in different sports that receives that scholarship.”
GIANTS12A-C-11SEP02-SP-DB Jeff Kent argues about a called third strike as Barry Bonds holds him back from home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt in the 7th against the Dodgers at SF. CHRONICLE PHOTO BY DARRYL BUSH
Darryl Bush/San Francisco Chronicle
It’s a sweet legacy from a guy not known for his sweetness. Kent candidly admits “sometimes I may have been an a–hole and told you guys (the media) to go kick rocks.” His prickly personality allowed him to hold his own with the temperamental Bonds, even coming to blows in the dugout. When Kent retired and moved to Austin, Texas, he says he went into a hole, “and I like living in my hole.”
Which is why it is even more wild that Kent would end up on a hugely popular, prime-time reality series.
He’s self-aware enough to realize that some people found the image of the ultimate baseball loner stranded on an island delightful.
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“I think there were some quirky comments about ‘Jeff’s just on his own island,’” he said. “I guess you could say that I don’t mind being by myself and trying to figure out how to survive. It’s the internal nature that I had through sports, through life, of the fight, the grind, of being able to survive and be good at what you do.”
Kent vouched for the true hardship in “Survivor,” noting that there were no bowls of Snickers bars in the corner to keep contestants going, and that he was “pooping in the woods and wiping your a— with leaves.” He said it was gross and smelly but that he found the hardest part was the social game.
PANIMAN – MARCH 29: “Got My Swag Back” – Jonathan Penner, Carter Williams, Sarah Dawson, Katie Hanson, and Jeff Kent of the Kalabaw Tribe during the fifth episode of Survivor: Philippines, Wednesday, October 17 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. (Photo by Monty Brinton/CBS via Getty Images)
CBS Photo Archive/CBS via Getty Images
“That was a struggle for me, because you’re lying all day long,” he said. “I lied to people and told them I was 10 years younger, that I only had two kids not four. I told them I was a motorcycle salesman at a motorcycle dealership my dad owned. Trying to keep track of all those lies was freaking mind blowing.”
And, yes, you’re allowed to be amused that one of Kent’s lies involved a motorcycle. He famously omitted motorcycle wheelies from the story he first told the Giants when he broke his wrist in 2002, claiming instead that he was injured while washing his truck.
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In 2012, Kent made it through 22 days on “Survivor” before being voted off the island. Two years later, his name appeared for the first time on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s Hall of Fame ballot and he survived 10 years before it seemed that his flame had been extinguished by the writers who didn’t vote for him, despite stellar numbers, including hitting more home runs than any second baseman in history.
Now he’ll be enshrined in Cooperstown. That’s called winning the ultimate reality show.
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