Second baseman Jeff Kent rounds the bases following the first of two home runs he hit in the Giants’ NLDS Game 3 playoff loss to the Marlins on Oct. 3, 1997.
BRANT WARD/STAFF
Jeff Kent gets a kick out of a spring training play on March 13, 199, where he thought he was out, but was called safe.
BRANT WARD/SFC
Josh Rawitch (right) in the Giants press gaggle with GM Brian Sabean in 2002. Rawitch was a reporter with sfgiants.com, long before his current role as president of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Courtesy of Josh Rawitch
Josh Rawitch, president of National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, seen here during an interview at an event to honor the Negro Leagues’ Mohawk Giants and unveiling of a historical marker on the grounds where their Island Park Stadium once stood at SUNY Schenectady County Community College on Thursday, July 25, 2024 in Schenectady, N.Y.
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
Back in 2002, Josh Rawitch was a relatively inexperienced young baseball writer on his first (and only) season covering the San Francisco Giants for sfgiants.com. The team, which went to the World Series, featured two stars, Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent.
On Sunday in Cooperstown, New York, that same former beat reporter will hand Kent his Hall of Fame plaque, because Rawitch is now the President of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
“It has made this whole thing more personable because I’m dealing with somebody that I know,” Kent said by phone this week. “I know Josh, I could share some emotion with him, I felt more comfortable doing that. When you know someone you can be more warm and open and feel less guarded. I feel that way with Josh. It is pretty neat.”
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For Rawitch, inducting a player who he covered as a writer more than 20 years ago is a little mind-blowing.
“I remember at the time thinking, ‘This guy’s probably going to break the record for most home runs by a second baseman,’ ” said Rawitch, who was 26 when he covered the Giants. “Jeff was clearly at that point already, an MVP and a bona fide superstar, and to know that he was kind of a yin and yang with Barry Bonds was just a fascinating thing to cover.
“It’s pretty cool it’s come full circle.”
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Next year is likely to bring more of the same from the 2002 team: manager Dusty Baker is likely to be elected to the Hall, and GM Brian Sabean is a strong possibility as well. Bruce Bochy is also eligible and a great candidate and of course Buster Posey is likely to go in off the writers’ ballot, so it might be a huge orange-and-black Induction Weekend in upstate New York in July 2027.
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“I look back at that year as a really amazing year of growth and learning about how to be a reporter and how to work around new personalities and clubhouses,” Rawitch said. “That’s what I honestly think about all the time, how lucky I was that I happened to cover the season they went to the World Series for the first time since ’89.
“To be able to be there for that and Jeff and Barry and Dusty Baker and Sabean — it was all one magical year.”
Kent and Rawitch were reunited three years later, when Kent signed a free-agent deal with the Dodgers, and lo and behold, that young Dodgers PR guy sure looked familiar.
“You know, players, they don’t trust media people right away, it takes a while,” Kent said. “I was able to when he was in PR in L.A. — that’s when we bonded a lot more.
“It was more of a love-hate relationship in S.F. because Josh was a media guy, and then he converted, and you have the standoff of a relationship a little bit, but being able to forge that relationship and trust with him in L.A. and have him be a part of this Hall of Fame moment, you know, is pretty special because I felt when I was in L.A. that he was a friend and he understood the boundaries that I had as a player.”
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The two weren’t close when Kent was in San Francisco. Kent was careful with the media and could be prickly at times, but Rawitch respected the fact that Kent was always there to answer questions, sometimes ones that weren’t even his.
“There were times Jeff was left to have to answer the questions for the team,” Rawitch said. “I always was impressed that he would stand up and take the fire for whatever was going on, have the wherewithal to stand in front of his locker and answer whatever questions came his way, even though I’m sure deep down he didn’t love that he had to speak on behalf of the club.
“Jeff was a stand-up guy, willing to talk whatever good or bad happened, and he always played incredibly hard, always diving for balls, doing whatever extra thing that nobody expected him to do. That’s probably what made him so successful.”
So much so that Sunday, Kent will hold center stage in Cooperstown, Rawitch standing nearby with the plaque that Kent will finally be rewarded with, more than 17 years after retiring. Player and beat writer once upon a time, are now friends — and will now always be connected by baseball’s highest honor.