It Was a Case of Plane Speaking

Kevin Brown didn’t know where he was going to wind up next season, but he knew where he was not going to wind up: Los Angeles.

Having spent last season in San Diego, a continent away from his wife and two kids in Macon, Ga., Brown had had it with long separations.

Still, Brown and his agent, Scott Boras, came to Dodger Stadium to listen to General Manager Kevin Malone. And after Malone had made his pitch, the idea of pitching in Dodger blue seemed a lot more attractive to Brown.

So he told his wife, Candace, to make a list of reasons not to sign with the Dodgers.

No. 1 was 3,000, the approximate number of miles that would separate Candace and sons Ridge, 7, and Grayson, 3, from Kevin.

Then the Dodgers came up with idea of the plane, a private jet that could be used up to a dozen times a season to reunite the family.

When that perk was first reported, there arose a misconception that Kevin would be using the plane to fly home between starts.

Not true.

It will be used by Candace and the kids to spend long weekends with Kevin.

“The plane made it easier for me to be a big girl,” Candace said. “It will take three or four hours off a trip because I don’t even have to go into Atlanta to catch a plane. But it is something Kevin would never have asked for.”

However, once the jet was offered, Brown’s thinking changed.

“It made it easier for me,” the Dodgers’ new right-hander said. “It turned the Dodgers from a West Coast team into a Midwest team, in terms of travel.”

The plane will make it easier for the Browns to keep their two-week rule in effect.

“We never go more than two weeks without seeing each other,” Candace said.

The ideal for Kevin would have been a bid by the Atlanta Braves.

“If Atlanta had made an offer, it would have been hard to turn down because I would have had the chance to pitch at home,” he said. “But I never expected that to be the case. Why would they make an offer with the pitching they have?”

According to Candace, the Browns won’t even take full advantage of the frequent-flier plan.

“It will just be for April, May and maybe September,” she said. “Once the kids are out of school, we’ll be here in Los Angeles.”

Although the plane deal is nice, the salary deal remains unreal to Candace.

“[Kevin] called me up and said, ‘How does seven years at $105 million sound?’ I thought he was joking,” she said. “It still hasn’t sunk in. It’s almost embarrassing.

“I think back to when Kevin was going to be a chemical engineer. We had our whole lives mapped out.”

It sometimes seems as if they have known each other all their lives. They met 17 years ago at Wilkinson County High. Kevin was 16, Candace 13.

“At that point,” Candace said, “he was going to be a marine biologist.”

Then Kevin met her father, who was an engineer, and changed his career goal, enrolling at Georgia Tech.

And just for fun, he pitched for the Yellow Jackets as a freshman walk-on. He wound up as an All-American, won a school-record 28 games and the world lost an engineer.

But Macon has gained a family that will have more than $100 million coming in over the next seven years. It’s like winning the lottery. Does Candace expect to find a lot of previously unknown relatives popping up?

“I think they already have,” she said. “I don’t think we are going to change because of the money. There is no reason to. The only thing that may change in our lives is what we can do for others.”

To Kevin Brown, nothing has changed.

“The fact is, the game remains the same on the field,” he said. “I always put more pressure on myself than others do. I believe I can win every time I go out there. If you don’t believe that, then you don’t belong out there.”

Brown has no doubt he belongs on the mound. But he refuses to believe that he belongs in a discussion of how baseball is pricing out the average fan.

“I have never believed that players’ salaries are tied to ticket prices,” Brown said. “If you don’t believe me, look at San Diego. They are dumping players and still raising ticket prices.”

So don’t put any guilt trips on Brown.

“I believe in the free-enterprise system,” he said. “You get what you can for your services. What do you say, ‘Please don’t pay me?’ Who is going to turn down that kind of money. Does Leonardo DiCaprio turn down $20 million if he is offered that for a movie part? Of course he doesn’t. That’s silly. But I never imagined being in this position.”

Brown hasn’t actually signed his historic deal with the Dodgers because lawyers are still going over the fine points. But if there were any doubts on the Dodger side, they were dispelled Tuesday when Brown underwent an extensive examination by team physician Frank Jobe, who declared that Brown is fit enough to pitch for another decade.

“In my heart of hearts, I feel like I could pitch forever,” Brown said. “But for someone like Dr. Jobe to say I could pitch for another 10 years means a lot.”

What also meant a lot to Brown was what he received after agreeing to the deal: A “Star Wars” poster signed by producer-director George Lucas.

One hundred and five million dollars? A private jet?

All very nice. But a “Star Wars” poster? Now there was a deal maker.