SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — Jeff Kent typically doesn’t take calls from unknown numbers. On this occasion, he made an exception.
Some time after being elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Kent found himself on his phone when he got a call from a number he didn’t recognize. Kent hadn’t talked to a robo-caller in a while, so he decided he’d take the call just for fun.
“Hello?” Jeff asked.
“Jeff,” the voice responded. “Jeff, this is Johnny Bench.”
Suffice it to say, Kent didn’t expect the voice of one of baseball’s all-time great players to be on the other line.
“I literally fell back in my chair,” Kent recollected before the Giants’ chaotic 4-2 win over the Chicago Cubs on Sunday at Scottsdale Stadium. “You’ve got to be kidding me. … Johnny Bench calling and giving me a piece of advice about the Hall of Fame and congratulating me.”
Kent’s phone call with Bench was one of many cool moments he’s experienced since being elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on the Contemporary Era Ballot. With a jam-packed summer ahead, more moments like this are awaiting.
“Baseball has come back to me in a flood, and so much of the game I’ve walked away from because I was done,” Kent said. “I had other things to do. I have a family and grandkids and businesses that I operate. So I walked away from the game. So all of this has come back in such a big flood.”
On July 26, Kent will be officially enshrined alongside Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones, who were elected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Unsurprisingly, Kent’s plaque will go in as a Giant. Kent has already started working on his speech, acknowledging it’s a bit too mechanical at the moment and that he wants to weave in more personal anecdotes.
A month later, Kent will make a rare visit to Oracle Park, where the Giants will retire his No. 21 on Aug. 29. Kent will become the 14th person in franchise history to have his jersey number retired, joining Christy Mathewson (no number), John McGraw (no number), Bill Terry (3), Mel Ott (4), Carl Hubbell (11), Monte Irvin (20), Will Clark (22), Willie Mays (24), Barry Bonds (25), Juan Marichal (27), Orlando Cepeda (30), Gaylord Perry (36) and Willie McCovey (44).
The Giants retire a player’s number when they’re voted into the Hall of Fame, the only exceptions being Bonds in 2018 and Clark in ‘22. Buster Posey’s No. 28 could also join that list if he’s voted in by the writers this upcoming December.
“And now the number — it’s hard for me to give you an adjective that describes it. It’s not cool. It’s not neat. It’s not great. It’s not surreal. There is no word yet that I’ve been able to find,” Kent said. “And you talk about my speech — I’m still searching for what that real description is. I don’t have one. I guess that’s how meaningful it is. I’m still searching for that, because I am overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed, and I don’t know. I really don’t. It does bring tears to my eyes. It’s been emotional. It’s been great.”
For now, Kent is in Scottsdale for a couple of days as a guest instructor. He hasn’t really gotten his hands dirty, jesting that he’s a “clean toy that comes out and stands around.” He enjoys talking to young hitters about mechanics but acknowledges that he doesn’t “want to be too influential because I’m not going to be here and follow up in the next couple of days.”
Reflecting on his career, Kent said he played the game with a little bit of arrogance, a little bit of cockiness and a little bit of hate. Kent, the 2000 NL MVP and a five-time All-Star, said he hated to lose, hated to fail, hated to strike out. Nearly two decades removed from his final game, Kent acknowledges that he doesn’t “have any hate anymore” because of where he’s at in his life.
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On the subject of hate, Kent joked that he dislikes new manager Tony Vitello because Tennessee won the 2024 College World Series by defeating Texas A&M, where his son, Kaeden, played as an infielder. Kent recalled trying to get Kaeden to play for Vitello via the transfer portal, but Kaeden stayed at Texas A&M and was drafted by the New York Yankees in the third round of the 2025 MLB draft.
In Kent, Vitello has a fan.
“Tony kind of rebuilt that program at Tennessee to be something proud of what they have,” Kent said. “Tennessee was kind of dead in the dumps. Then, they got Tony and he kind of rebuilt them. I was impressed with what he did. I watched his passion on the field and how he backed his players.”
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