No ranch dressing for Jeff Kent.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

The town of Tilden, Texas, sits at the intersection of highways 16 and 72 in rural McMullen County. The town was probably named after Samuel J. "Whispering Sammy" Tilden, a Democrat who lost the hotly contested presidential race of 1876 to Rutherford B. Hayes. It took weeks to sort out the election that year. Florida, among other states, accidentally sent in double returns.

In the decade before Tilden became an official city in 1877, folks referred to the area with the saloon, general store and school as "Dog Town." Legend said it was because cowboys went on a drunken shooting spree and left behind 15 dead dogs.

Travel south from Tilden for 16 miles, the last 8 on a dirt road, and Jeff Kent's ranch comes sprawling forth, all 3,672 acres of it.

This land of scrub brush and cactus is where the Giants second baseman spent his winter.

Oh, the glamorous life of the National League most valuable player.

"A typical day might be fixing something, whether it's a broken water line or, this year, replacing a septic system," said Kent, who will make $6 million this season. "We're fixing trucks, fixing tractors, plowing fields, filling our feeders and making sure the electronics work on the feeders for the deer, for the wildlife."

After a season of sellout crowds and a playoff series in New York, Kent needed only the company of his wife, his three kids, a few friends and 200 hundred beef cattle.