Act two: Dodgers' Yasiel Puig ready for fresh start

LOS ANGELES – Yasiel Puig flew from Oklahoma City on Thursday night after a few days spent wondering if he would be among those chosen for September duty. He spoke to manager Dave Roberts on the phone Thursday. Before that, Roberts and Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, polled a handful of veteran players regarding them having another go with Puig in their clubhouse. Puig arrived at Dodger Stadium on Friday afternoon – “Early,” Roberts stressed – and met again with Roberts, then with some of those veteran players, who assured him he was welcome, and then with the cameras and notepads.

This is his new life, at least for now. No more grumbling over him in the corner. No more head shakes from the front office that lead only to Puig batting fifth and playing right field in his return against the Padres. No more misdirection questions from the press, who had run through the chemistry dilemma only the week before when catcher A.J. Ellis was traded. Instead, he was asked how he’d grown, how he intended to conduct himself, what it was like to walk into a clubhouse that 32 days before was glad to be rid of him, then to discover his locker had been moved across the room.

The game rolls on.

Puig had spent a good part of his three-plus-year career testing the limits of the talent-always-plays adage, and then everybody it seemed tired of an act that wandered between endearing and obnoxious, sometimes all the way to detrimental, and so the guy who showed up Friday seemed subdued, even tamped.

“It wasn’t embarrassing,” he said through translator Jesus Quinonez. “I earned the demotion to Triple-A. I feel like I’m a better person and I’m here now to show it, to play well, to do things that will positively effect my future.

“This is my job. I can only do what helps me play better. … The rest is not up to me. I don’t decide those things. If I’m here in Los Angeles, I’m going to take advantage of the opportunity and enjoy the city. If it’s with another team, then that’s something I can’t control.”

A month in Oklahoma City – 19 games – wrought a .348 batting average, a .400 on-base percentage, four home runs and 12 RBI. Scouts who saw him said he’d scalded the ball, that he’d lost none of his swagger, and that he looked like the same guy to them. That is, an exceptionally toolsy player who enjoys the spotlight a lot and sliders away not so much.

Yes, it was all very serious, this shape-up-or-ship-out period of Yasiel Puig’s life. Normally gregarious, or at the very least sociable, he stared ahead when discussing his time away and then his re-entry. He smiled once, when a teammate passed and applauded his return. He said, basically, he was here to work hard and fly right, to be a good teammate, to do what was asked of him. There’s no telling if Puig was back because he’d grown enough in a month to warrant a place among them again, or because Josh Reddick spent a month batting .161 – three for 25 against lefties. Dustings of both, maybe.

“We accomplished – he accomplished – what we had hoped,” Roberts said. “He earned the opportunity to get back here,” adding later, “Ultimately we thought he made us better.”

The crowd at Dodger Stadium bellowed its approval when his name was announced in the lineup, and then again when he came to bat in the second inning. He flied to right. To many here, he remains the best of Puig – fast and strong and alive and maybe a little nutty. Even Puig said his goal was to be the Puig of 2013, the one who lit up the summer while viewing cut-off men as charming distractions. The Dodgers three years later might well have put up with that guy, if not the guy whose on-base and slugging percentages have declined annually.

Whatever happens from here, it seems clear Puig’s name will be a hot one this winter. First, however, there is baseball to play, and a platoon to fill, and a room to win over, and an organization to romance, and maybe Puig has his heart in it.

And maybe it’s not easy to become somebody else in a month.