By John Klima
Staff Writer

There was Blake DeWitt taking a slight lead off second base in a one-run game against the Giants this week, when amid the crowd noise he heard shortstop Rafael Furcal, creeping off first base, barking at him to get the most out of his jump. The inning ended harmlessly, but this mundane moment is a friendly reminder that class is back in session in the major leagues.

There are plenty of new kids in the classroom, new names in the box scores, and the inevitable guessing game that accompanies it. Which kid is really going to make a difference for his given team? The kids who have made opening day rosters have an advantage over their younger brethren because the chances are the big club feels that they can help right now, and thus, will get a prolonged look. That’s pure gold for any player who was in the minor leagues at this time last year. Or, to look at it the other way, he’s a stopgap until May when the guy they want to play (see Ryan Braun, 2007) is ready.

Let’s start with DeWitt. He became the first Dodger third baseman to get a hit in his first major league at-bat since Bill Russell in 1969. That coincidental comparison might not be a bad one. There will surely be arguments that DeWitt should be able to hit for enough power to play a corner in the big leagues, but the Dodgers, to their credit, have actively said that time doesn’t have to be right now.

Saying a player doesn’t have to be a savior is a suave way of saying that he wouldn’t be here if he couldn’t contribute, but it doesn’t mean a rookie doesn’t have to figure things out right now. He has to learn the subtle nuances of playing there, the unwritten tricks for gaining an advantage in a faster game. In other words, your tools got you here. Now show us you know how to play the game. That goes for anyone. Patience is a virtue this time, and the kid might have enough to hang around longer than a fill-in player. Time will tell.

Rookies aren’t supposed to tell about the hazing rituals that go on in the locker room. True, the obligatory ritual, like Angel rookie reliever Darren O’Day hauling the suitcase full of candy to the bullpen, may go public. But the best rookie pranks always go unreported. O’Day has the last name of an Irish bartender and a funky motion that might make batters think they’ve had one too many. O’Day’s presence here is another gradual sign that the Angels are preparing for life after Francisco Rodriguez. Long after O’Day has enough seniority to pull pranks on other pitchers, he might be bumped up in the bullpen. He threw a scoreless debut in Minnesota, and just pitched himself into one of baseball’s deepest bullpens this spring.

One of these days, O’Day will run into Seattle’s Ichiro, whose playing patterns are a lot like Kosuke Fukudome. He is the National League’s resident non-rookie rookie playing center field under a contract Sam Zell can’t wait to ditch along with the rest of the Chicago Cubs.

Here’s the formula: take pitches, foul pitches off, get hit by pitches, and defensively, try to make the Cubs pitchers and PR people look good. He reached base in his first five at-bats, looked nice doing so, and Zell immediately asked the Chicago Tribune why they were still covering the team this year.

Can’t wait to see what happens when Fukudome runs into Reds right-hander Johnny Cueto, who made the opening day roster despite a 5.09 ERA in the always brutal Grapefruit League. After striking out 19 in 17 innings and whetting manager Dusty Baker’s lust for a right-handed power arm, Baker put the ball in his hand and watched him strike out 10 Diamondbacks in his Major League debut. It was good to see Baker find room for Cueto, who he really couldn’t afford to send down, and keep him with four other non-roster guys who made the Reds, among them outfielder and professional underachiever Corey Patterson.

Not that it was all good in the first week of class. Andrew Miller, the left-handed pitcher Florida acquired as part of the payment for Miguel Cabrera, looked every bit like an unpolished young pitcher, which of course means he can only be pitching for the Marlins. He couldn’t reach the fifth inning in his first National League start, couldn’t throw strikes and his brand spanking new ERA of 10.80 reflects a spanking. Come to think of it, the Marlins are going to run a 10-year old out to the mound one day, and nobody’s going to think twice about the absurdity of it.

Not making a trade in the summer that would cost them a Marlins-ready minor league prospect is very possibly what the Indians had in mind when they imported Japanese reliever Masa Kobayashi, who gave up two hits before finagling his way out of a mess in his debut. Perhaps he will pitch well enough to untangle the confusion between himself and the famous competitive Hot Dog eater, who would probably get indigestion if he had Marlins season tickets this year.

You have to love the fine art of guessing. In the always hit-and-miss Japanese free agent market, the Indians have tried before to find an inexpensive, experienced Japanese bullpen arm. Boston’s Hideki Okajima might be a once every five years discovery, the kind of bullpen arm that essentially saves a minor league prospect in a trade late in the summer if he can be effective today. If not, Kobayashi was a comparatively inexpensive flyer. He can always eat the flyer.

It’s hard to predict a true impact player after one week, but you can look at small details. The Cardinals, finally trying to get younger under new GM John Mozeliak, took outfielder Brian Barton in the Rule V draft from the Indians, put him on the bench, and watched him get a hit in his major league debut. Barton is Delwyn Young and Paul McAnulty in a much more athletic body; a pure hitter with no position who just happened to be buried behind an All-Star center fielder in Cleveland. The Westchester product is a perfect Rule V pickup and a potentially dirt-cheap Jim Edmonds replacement. The Cardinals also kept right-hander Kyle McClellan, 23, who has never pitched above double-A.

Hey, at this time last year, nobody knew about Kyle Kendrick, and he won 10 games for the Phillies. Then his teammates cranked him this year and told him he was traded to Japan for Kobayashi, the actual guy who slaughters Hot Dogs for a hobby. Well, you’re only a rookie once, but sometimes gullible for longer than a year. That’s all fine, but don’t be gullible where it counts. A rookie mistake, in the minds of decision makers, does not refer to a bad play.