Drew’s Disposition Has Ghost of Chance to Work

He slipped into the visitors’ clubhouse two hours before the first pitch Wednesday, as blank as a stare, as quiet as a sigh.

J.D. Ghost.

He was late because his knee was being examined, but few noticed.

He would be sidelined for the next two games, but the Dodgers won both.

He glided into the crowded room in the bowels of San Diego’s Petco Park at 4:57 p.m., I wrote it down exactly, because it was the first time I had seen him in any clubhouse since Vero Beach.

Three months earlier. Fifty-five million promises ago.

His name then was J.D. Drew, remember?

He was The New Beltre. He was The Young Finley.

He was the double sixes in Paul DePodesta’s giant game of Strat-O-Matic, the scroll wheel on his baseball iPod.

He was the ideal player for those who study the sport at a keyboard and play it in a basement.

He was pixel perfect.

Look at that patience! Look at those smarts! Look at that swing!

Look at ... wait a minute?

Where did he go?

The moment Drew moved from the spreadsheet to the outfield, he disappeared.

The real pitchers cramped him. The real world crowded him.

He showed patience when the game required passion. He retreated when the clubhouse needed a charge.

The baseball part has been his fault. The human part has not.

But the only part that matters is, upon desperately turning to him for leadership, the Dodgers have grasped for air.

As they approach the halfway point of a season that still faintly breathes, Drew will walk softly and carry a shaky stick and raise a question.

If a $55-million investment falls in the middle of a crowded forest, how in the world can it not make a sound?

J.D. Ghost.

“This has been asked about before, I understand the question,” Drew said Wednesday. “But this is the way I’ve always been. Some people are just geared different than me.”

He is a pleasant guy, kind, polite, deeply religious, by all accounts a truly good man.

But so far, for this job, on this team, he’s been the wrong man.

“I think he’s been an absolute warrior for us,” DePodesta countered. “I’ve been very happy with the way he’s played, absolutely.”

The kid GM is about 200 SAT points smarter than me, so maybe I’m the one who is missing something here, but ...

With runners in scoring position, Drew is batting .216.

He has come up with 77 men in scoring position and driven home 18.

He has yet to get a knock with the bases loaded, going hitless in four attempts.

He is among the league leaders in the only statistic that rewards inertia -- the walk.

He has somehow managed, until this week, to shake his reputation as an injury-prone player, playing hard and playing hurt and yet ...

Other than the two homers he hit one night against Milwaukee, has he done anything that anybody remembers?

DePodesta is happy.

I say, stick a control-alt-delete in it.

Said Drew: “This is a new role for me, I’m still learning it.”

That’s the problem. It’s all about the role.

By hurriedly signing Drew amid the exhaust from a departing Beltre this winter, DePodesta put him in two unfamiliar positions:

The centerpiece in the batting order. The highest-paid veteran in the clubhouse.

Drew has never been either, and always been thrilled about it.

He was surrounded by big names in St. Louis, big money in Atlanta and tire ads in newspaper stories.

He was never the main man, and never wanted to be, and credits last season’s success under the Braves’ Bobby Cox to simply being left alone.

“Last year Bobby just told me to have fun with it, and I finally relaxed,” said Drew, who showed it with 31 homers and a 1.005 on-base-plus-slugging percentage.

DePodesta saw the pop, but may not have looked close enough at the personality, and his biggest purchase has since become his strangest purchase.

He has been invisible to many fans since failing to get a hit in his first 25 at-bats of the season. He is just as stealth in the clubhouse.

He was spotted working late with Jason Repko the other night in San Diego, but that’s rare. Drew generally comes and goes with all the fuss of the guy washing the socks.

Jeff Kent doesn’t say much either, but he has done plenty of hollering with his bat.

The Dodgers are still waiting for Drew to show up somewhere. Anywhere.

“The way I look at my job is, I go up there and try to have the best at-bats I can have, every night,” Drew said. “I’m not a yeller or a screamer. I try to lead in other ways.”

What he’s not, of course, is the two things these Dodgers need most.

A yeller. And a screamer.

“Having one helps, no doubt about it,” pitcher Derek Lowe said. “Having somebody jump somebody’s butt once in a while, you need that. Right now, when you lose around here, it’s so quiet. It’s like everyone walking around on tippy-toes.”

The players don’t blame Kent or Drew. They knew. Didn’t everyone know?

“You can’t change someone,” Lowe said. “He and Jeff are quiet, and that’s fine, that’s them, they knew that coming in.”

Or did they? Surely they did. Maybe the Dodger bosses just didn’t think it mattered very much.

Maybe now, amid the sort of quiet clubhouse acceptance that fosters eight-game losing streaks, they will realize they were wrong?

“Chemistry is critical, but you can get it from anywhere, you don’t need it from your highest paid guys,” DePodesta said. “We thought we might get it out of other guys like Valentin, Bradley, Lowe, Gagne.”

Yet as DePodesta later acknowledged, starting pitchers don’t work enough to fulfill that role, so Lowe is out.

Even if Eric Gagne were healthy, given his careful personality, he wouldn’t have worked either.

That leaves a new guy in Jose Valentin, and an unsettling guy in Milton Bradley. Neither seemed right even if they weren’t both hurt.

“All we expect of J.D. and Kent is to hit third and fourth in the lineup,” DePodesta said.

Yet for that kind of money, in this kind of environment, their job description just isn’t that simple.

“By no means do I think I’m better than anyone in the clubhouse,” Drew said. “I know what people want, but it’s not always me. I’ve got to be comfortable with who I am.”

He’s humble. He’s hard-working. He’s ... where again?