Kevin Brown returns to form for Dodgers; LA right-hander overcame elbow and back injuries to regain his rating as one of the premier starters in the National League

Baseball Digest, Nov, 2003 by David Leon Moore

SOMEONE MAKING $15 MILLION A year isn't going to elicit a lot of sympathy when things go wrong. And Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Kevin Brown asks for none. A guy with a stoic public persona and a habit of keeping his distance also isn't likely to cause a run on get-well cards when he is in pain, and Brown can live with that.

The 6-4, 220-pound right-hander, enjoyed a spectacular comeback season in 2003. He was intimidating, and gruff and, yes, sometimes rude--and one was tempted to come to the conclusion that he has been so willing to pitch with agonizing injuries in recent years because he simply doesn't feel anything.

But that would be wrong on two counts.

Physically, Brown's back hurt so much late last season that, even after a series of pain-killing injections, "just walking was a chore," he says. "I couldn't stand up straight for a month."

Emotionally, too, Brown is capable of hurting.

Of his last start in 2002, a 5-2 loss September 10 at San Francisco, he says, "That was a really tough day. I knew the team needed for me to give them a chance, and I just did not have it. I just couldn't get it done. It was so disappointing. That was basically the second year in a row that I felt like I had come up short trying to help the team down the stretch.

"We had a chance to be in the playoffs. We were so close, and I couldn't make a difference."

Normally, Brown keeps such thoughts to himself having distrusted the media for years because of his contention that reporters twisted his words earlier in his career.

But there he was, sitting in the dugout before a game last August, chatting amiably for 30 minutes about his disappointments, his ambitions, his return to prominence and what might await him and the Dodgers down the stretch for the 2003 season.

Maybe his rare openness is the result of the good vibes through his first 27 starts of the season and Brown putting up some of the best numbers of his career: an 13-7 record with a 2.26 earned run average, the second best ERA in the major leagues through September 1, a record that's all the more impressive since the Dodgers were ranked last offensively in the N.L.

Or maybe it's that, in his 17th year in the majors and his fifth of a seven-year, $105 million deal, he decided that before he has to say goodbye, it might be time to say hello a little more often.

Brown, 38, scoffs at the notion he was trying to remake his image.

"What people think about me doesn't bother me the way it used to," he says. "I've learned that what a few people in the media think doesn't matter. It's the guys I play with. It's what they think. It's my family, my friends.

"I can't please everybody. I wouldn't change, because I'm not worried about being politically correct to somebody to try to come off favorably. I'm going to say what I think. I'm going to tell the truth. If somebody wants to misconstrue that ...

"I've kind of distanced myself a lot of times because things you say can be written totally different, and that's definitely happened to me in the past.

"Once something is said about you, it's kind of hard to shake. But when it comes down to it, it doesn't affect what I do when I walk out on the field, and it doesn't affect me when I'm around my family. So, if some people have the wrong idea, well, so be it. It's an uphill battle. I'm not going to spend my lime and energy in life trying to go back and beat that down."

TAKING STOCK OF THE SITUATION

Brown, who is married and has three children, does have a lighter side at the ballpark, though. Before every Sunday home game, he is all smiles as he pals around with 50 kids from Boys and Girls Clubs in the Los Angeles area, his guests as part of a community program called Browntown L.A.

Moreover, despite his protests, Brown does seem changed, friendlier and cheerier in general, understandable given his success and good health.

During the previous two seasons, arm and back injuries resulted in five trips to the DL and two trips to the operating room. He had elbow surgery at the end of the 2001 season and back surgery in June 2002. Last year, he threw just 63.2 innings. The year before, only 115.2.

At his lowest, he thought his career might be over.

Before that last start of 2002 against the Giants, "I took everything I could find in the medicine cabinet to try to get me through the game, trying to find a way to help the team," he says.

Two days later, after another injection didn't relieve his back pain, he was shut down for the season.

"At that point I started saying, 'OK, you never know when the end is going to happen. Is this it?'

"I mean, I've had the surgery. I've done all the rehab they want me to do, And here I am. I can barely walk, much less think about getting on the field to compete. I just didn't know if this was the bell tolling for me."

Through his work with a doctor and a physical therapist in the offseason, Brown says he realized that the surgery he had, while relieving his pain initially, created other problems.

"It was a situation where I had, over the years, sustained a lot of little injuries and had muscles that had just shut down, and other muscles were compensating," he says. "The surgery kind of messed up these compensation mechanisms I had developed over the years, and I had to address those."