It’s Jonathan Broxton, relaxed and enjoying his second time around at the All-Star game

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Away from their locker room, away from the daily pressure of performing and the stress of coming through in the clutch, players can sometimes seem very different.

Relaxed, easy to talk to, even teasing.

Andre Ethier, who can be moody and curt in his dealings with the media, seemed completely informal at Monday’s All-Star news conference. Hong-Chih Kuo was clearly enjoying himself, even taking a camera to film other All-Stars. Rafael Furcal joked with the media about being older than when he first made the All-Star team in 2003.

But the most telling difference that this was not the Dodgers’ clubhouse probably came from Jonathan Broxton.

A loose and smiling Broxton. An open Broxton.

He of the often one-word answers. Of the monotone response. A closer who can almost seem determined to hide any glimpse of personality.

Told that Andre Ethier was looking to him for guidance in handling the All-Star game experience, Broxton glanced from his podium with three reporters listening to him, to Ethier, who was engulfed by media, and laughed.

‘You see all the media over there around him, with the cameras and everything?’ Broxton said. ‘I think he’s about to give me some tips when this is over.’

Last year Broxton also made the All-Star team but did not play because of a sore ankle.

‘It’s going a little slower [now],’ he said. ‘Last year everything was a blur. It was going so fast, you really didn’t have much time to enjoy it. Having to go to this place and that place. This year I’m starting to enjoy it a little more.’

It turns out Broxton’s normally reserved nature around a baseball field can partially be attributed to the way his father, Randy, told him to approach the game.

‘I just don’t show much [emotion],’ Broxton said. ‘It’s just the way I am, the way I was brought up. Just taught not to show too much emotion on the field.

‘My dad talked about never showing any emotions on the field, good or bad.’

Broxton said his dad, who coached him throughout his Little League years, was also a pitcher in high school.

‘They say he could run it up there in the mid 90s,’ Broxton said.

A construction accident, however, ended his father’s pitching career.

‘My dad just got his fingers chopped off and he couldn’t throw anymore,’ he said. ‘He was building houses and a saw cut [two of] his fingers off.’

Broxton said his father continued to work for the same company for over 30 years until the current recession forced it to close down.

His father has found a job as a physical education teacher, and baseball and softball coach, at a private high school back in Broxton’s hometown of Waynesboro, Ga.

‘Now he’s doing something he loves,’ he said.

So is Broxton, of course, even if he doesn’t always show it.

-- Steve Dilbeck