COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- Throughout his weekend of celebration as a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2026, Jeff Kent kept describing himself with one word: deflector.
Deflecting is what kept people at arm’s length throughout the second baseman’s 17-year career. Deflecting made him a bit of a mystery man who didn’t want to reveal too much about himself, even to his own teammates.
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He never liked having to explain what he was doing on the field, or how he did it. He just wanted to get the job done.
“I'm a deflector … maybe it's not wanting to deal with it, but it's -- go find somebody else to talk to, because I'm OK,” Kent said the day before the induction ceremony in Cooperstown. “And now I can't deflect. Because here I am.”
Kent’s whirlwind induction weekend peeled back a little bit of the peculiarities that followed him through his career. He showed a level of emotion that few have seen, to the point that even he seemed a little surprised by it.
The more Kent talked, the more the tears flowed.
“I don’t know whether he’s going to smile, or whether he’s going to cry,” Kent’s Giants manager, Dusty Baker said, wryly, ahead of the induction ceremony.
Kent did both. Eighteen years after he played his final game with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the five-time All-Star, 2000 National League MVP and the record holder for home runs by a second baseman (351 at the position, 377 total) didn’t deflect a thing. Instead, he embraced the moment, joining 59 fellow Hall of Famers on the stage and delivering a warm speech that relayed gratitude to be given baseball’s greatest honor: a place in Cooperstown.
“When my wife and I had a chance to visit the Hall of Fame Museum just a few months ago, I finally realized the weight that this game carries,” Kent said. “The halls are filled with stories that you can't experience anywhere else, and to know that I get to be a part of that history, standing alongside the legends that I grew up watching … overwhelming doesn't even begin to describe it."
Kent played for six different clubs over his 17-year career in the Majors, delivering his most prolific stretch during his stint with the Giants (1997-2002). He teamed up with Barry Bonds to form the team’s best 1-2 punch since the Willie Mays-Willie McCovey era.
Kent, who also played for the Blue Jays, Mets, Indians, Astros and Dodgers, spoke reverently about every stop he made. He also paid tribute to two fellow Hall of Fame second basemen who were not teammates, but who impacted his career by the examples they set: Joe Morgan and Ryne Sandberg.
“I never had a chance to meet Ryne,” an emotional Kent said of the late Cubs legend, who passed away in 2025. “But I watched him play every day because I wanted to be like him. He played with respect. He played with toughness and he played with a quiet fire, and I hope he knows that a lot of us who came after him play that way as well.”
Aside from his words to his family, Kent saved his most poignant comments for Baker, who was in attendance at the ceremony and will likely return to Cooperstown next year as a Contemporary Era ballot selection for his career as a manager.
Kent praised Baker for being “the right man at the right time for me.”
“I'm naturally a half-empty guy,” Kent said. “I see what's broken and I want to fix it. That's probably what drew me to this game. But looking back, I think I complicated the game a lot more than it needed to be. And Dusty was the opposite. Dusty didn't complicate the game. He respected it.”
For nearly two decades, Kent crafted a reputation that suited him -- quiet, businesslike, a little surly and challenging to get to know.
But the Hall of Fame process brought out a side of Kent that has always been there. It was just reserved for the people who know him best. Not as a ballplayer, but as a son, friend, husband, father and grandfather.
“When you play this game, you have to play with a little hatred,” Kent said after he delivered his speech. “And I use that word lightly. But you have to have a little bit of … people call it cockiness or arrogance or confidence. You have to play this game with a chip on the shoulder. It's a little bit of anger. Maybe you're mad, just have this -- define your own way to say ‘mad.’
“And I’m not mad anymore. Maybe that's why.”
Giants Senior Reporter Maria Guardado contributed to this story.