Best version of Mookie Betts on display right now

Mookie Betts was hurt last season, bone spurs in his hip, chronic pain, injured list and cortisone shots and finally a season when he only hit .264 and missed 40 games. It means he wasn’t Mookie, as exciting a player as the Dodgers have had since Jackie Robinson. Now he's healthy again, and he is back, back to being Mookie, back to being as much fun to watch play ball as anybody on the planet.

The Pirates held Betts hitless on Tuesday night as they got another game off the Dodgers. Not many other teams stopped him or slowed him down in May, across which Betts batted .342 and hit 12 home runs, knocked in 27 in 28 games and scored 31 runs. By the way? He also had 39 hits in those 28 games.

“This is the best he’s been as a Dodger,” manager Dave Roberts was telling me Tuesday afternoon. “I still find it amazing sometimes that someone as talented as [Betts] is still under the radar a little bit when it comes to all the different ways he can impact a game.

“This is also as joyful as I’ve seen him as a Dodger, even before he went on the tear he’s been on,” Roberts continued.

There are two words that Roberts uses frequently when discussing Mookie Betts’ game -- at the plate, on the bases and even the way he turns defense into offense in the outfield -- and his personality:

“Magnetic” is one.

The other is “relatable.”

“Honestly,” Roberts said, “there’s only a handful of players this magnetic that people are drawn to them. Mike Trout comes to mind, of course. But Mookie doesn’t look like that kind of physical player. And obviously he’s not as physical as a guy like Aaron Judge is. But, to me, that’s just another part of his appeal, along with his smile. There’s something relatable about him even when he’s doing great things on a ballfield. He makes people want to know him better.

“If you’re around him every day, you understand it even better. The best way for me to describe it, just from my own perspective, is that there’s a softness to his heart and joy to his game.”

Roberts is one of the smartest guys in baseball, and most aware, and not just about his game. He has spoken eloquently over the past couple of years about race and social justice. And he has a sense of history, as well. When you even raise the subject of the way the great Jackie Robinson played the game, the Dodgers manager begins this way:

“You always have to be careful when the subject is Jackie, because you must never sound as if you’re slighting him and how he changed the game, on and off the field, in any way.”

But Roberts is aware that you can draw a line out of Brooklyn and the '50s and the multiple ways Robinson impacted any game he was playing to all the things Betts can do on a ballfield once he leads off the Dodgers' first.

“Jackie didn’t have the power Mookie does,” Roberts said. “And they play different positions. But when you talked about Jackie’s offense, that meant a lot of things. In that way, there are similarities.”

Roberts paused.

“And you can put one other thing into the conversation: You can’t minimize, at least in my opinion, what he adds to the clubhouse and off the field as a young man of color who might be getting other young men of color to see the possibilities of our game," Roberts said.

Betts was an MVP with the Red Sox, and he helped win a World Series with them. He helped the Dodgers win a World Series, their first since 1988, two years ago. And when it was all on the line in Game 6 and the Dodgers were still losing to the Rays, he doubled Austin Barnes to third (Barnes would score on a wild pitch). Then Betts, once he got to third base, changed Game 6 for good when he was a streak of light -- scoring on Corey Seager’s chopper to Ji-Man Choi at first. Later, Mookie sealed the deal with a home run.

Betts, who has 15 home runs in all this season, had a May slash line of .342/.411/.746 and a 1.157 OPS. On the first of June, he already has 56 hits. He doesn’t turn 30 until the first week of October. By the way? He’s made two trips to October with the Dodgers so far. He hit .296 in 18 postseason games when the Dodgers were winning it all in ’20. He hit .319 in 12 postseason games for the Dodgers last year.

Maybe former Dodger Kiké Hernández summed it up the best after seeing what it was like to have Betts as a teammate:

“Mookie Betts is the real deal.”

Now he is at full health, and full speed, again. He’s Mookie again. That’s supposed to just be his nickname. Somehow every time he steps on the field, he turns it into a verb. A very active verb. The last word on all this comes from his manager.

“There’s nothing he can’t do on a baseball field,” Roberts said.