Dodger Road Show Remains a Big Hit With 10-4 Victory

MONTREAL —  There’s a bull’s-eye on his shirt, round and vivid and open for visitors.

And Kevin Elster thinks, so?

There’s a Dodger uniform underneath it.

A baseball game in front of it.

Second chances all around it,

He may be a target, but he’s a moving target, from unemployment to audition to the eighth spot in a lineup that has scored 20 runs in two games.

Two games, two wins, and the Dodgers’ marked man is their happiest man.

“This is very cool,” Elster said late Tuesday in Montreal.

Good thing, because if it wasn’t, it would be very hot.

The Dodgers’ 10-4 victory over the throw-in-the-towel Expos provided the season’s first glimpse into what could be either their first success, or smash-up.

Elster battled for a double, a single and knocked in two runs.

He also watched a grounder skip between his legs to allow one.

OK, so throw out the error because it was only his second game on turf in more than a year.

Throw in the run he scored during the tie-breaking inning on opening day.

Add the fact that in two days, the suddenly well-protected Dodgers’ seventh hitter has gone five for 10 and, well. . .

Somewhat cool.

But very early.

This will be a situation that requires close inspection, much closer than was possible during the Dodgers’ first two wins here against a young team.

This is, after all, about more than just Kevin Elster’s glove.

This is about Davey Johnson’s vision.

It has been written here that, considering Johnson is one of the few in the room with a ring, the Dodgers would do well to follow that vision.

This winter, by adding balance and bullpen, the Dodgers finally did.

But Kevin Elster is the real test of faith.

Because for the first time, Johnson is starting a player that many in the organization did not want.

They wanted young Alex Cora. They wanted defense. They wanted development.

Johnson, however, wants victories. He wants them now. He wants to earn them the way he has always earned them.

So he wanted a guy who had not played for a year because of frustration over injuries, a guy who was released in the middle of the season from his previous job.

But a guy who, in one amazing 1996, hit 24 homers and drove in 99 runs and drove Johnson’s Baltimore Orioles crazy.

It sounded every crazier, but this spring he wanted Elster.

“I’m an offensive manager,” Johnson reiterated Tuesday. “That is always how I’ve won. Let me get the lead, then I’ll worry about defense.”

And Elster, born in Huntington Beach and bored with retirement, wanted the Dodgers.

It was Elster’s brother, Pat, who called the Dodgers looking for a vacancy this winter.

“I’m one of those guys who really wanted to play there, who always thought about playing there,” Elster said.

It is Elster’s parents who will put him up in his childhood home this summer, even the same room.

“Mom will make my meals, wash my underwear, just like the old days,” he said with a grin.

But it is Elster who did the best job of turning back time by showing up this spring looking somewhat less than 35 years old, and considerably better than a guy who everybody thought was done.

“When I talked to him this winter, I thought, well, the shortstop job is still wide open, why not,” said Johnson, who managed Elster with the Mets in the late 1980’s. “But I thought it would be a longshot.”

Then he saw Elster outhitting Cora while playing decent enough defense to remind him of another test of faith.

A guy by the name of Rafael Santana.

“He didn’t have much range, but when you hit it to him it was an out,” Johnson said. “Won a world championship with him.”

Winning is Johnson’s intention here, too, despite what anyone might think about Elster just keeping the spot warm for that coming attraction named Alex Rodriguez.

For one thing, if Johnson doesn’t win now, there’s no guarantee he would even be around to manage Rodriguez next year. Or that he’d want to be around.

“Kevin gives us our best chance to win, and that’s what this is all about,” Johnson said. “He makes it so there’s no easy spot in the lineup. He gives us a good bat, good protection, good balance.”

The argument was enough to convince his bosses, although Kevin Malone admitted it was not unanimous.

“There were a few dissenters,” said the Dodger general manager. “There were people who wanted to go with the younger guy who could play defense.”

Malone ultimately listened to the right guy.

“Any time a manager is that confident of a player, it makes you confident, too,” Malone said.

With all this support, Elster has not so much walked through these early season days as floated.

“I tell the guys on the team, I’m just along for the ride,” he said. ‘ “Let’s try to win a championship, and thanks for having me.’ ”

He knows about the bull’s-eye.

“It’s amazing, I’ve always been good-field, no-hit, and now everybody says I’m just the opposite,” he said.

He knows how something like Tuesday’s error looked back in Los Angeles.

“The first time in my career that a ball has hopped between my legs like that,” he said. “I’ve never even imagined that.”

He shrugged and, for the umpteenth time in two games, smiled.

“I’m just living the moment,” he said. “And having a blast.”

If he’s still saying that in September, now that would be very cool.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.