Jones is ready, but will baseball be ready?

All was bright and sunny at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday, when the media got to meet the newest edition of hope springs eternal.

There were no signs of the storm clouds gathering on baseball’s horizon and scheduled to bring doom and gloom sometime today.

Andruw Jones Welcome Day beat George Mitchell Report Day by 24 hours.

For Jones’ sake, that’s nice. From all reports, the newest Dodger is a nice person who doesn’t say a lot, doesn’t make a lot of trouble, shows up every day and can play center field like a dream.

He played the last 11 and a fraction seasons with the Atlanta Braves and has played in two World Series, five National League Championship Series and 10 NL division series. That much winning alone will make him a curiosity in the Dodger clubhouse.

Dodger player to Jones in spring training: “So, Andruw, when they play those games in, like, the middle of October, what is that like? Is it colder? Do people still sit in the stands? Doesn’t that kind of cut into your off-season golf?”

Jones batted .222 last season, with 26 home runs, after batting in the low .260s the previous two years and having 51 and 41 homers, respectively. The blip of 2007 prompted the Dodgers to structure a deal short on length, two years, but long on money, $36.2 million.

The short-term deal, of course, was spun by Jones and the Dodgers as merely a prelude to a longer deal when he gets back to those numbers of ’05 and ’06.

Jones said, “I want to be here for a long time.”

Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti said, “I’d be more concerned about last year if his age were different. But at 30-31, we see him as in the middle of his career, not at the end.”

One thing for oft-disappointed Dodger fans to cling to: Jones is the opposite of fragile. This is not a guy who depletes the trainer’s supply of Ace bandages. He has never been on the disabled list, and as his agent, Scott Boras, points out, he is the only center fielder to play 1,300 innings a year 10 years in a row. Do the math. Nine innings times 162 games is 1,458 innings.

“Torii Hunter (the Angels’ new acquisition in center field) did 1,300,” Boras said. “Once.”

Meow.

So, outside of not knowing how to spell his first name and having a low batting average last year in a career that already has Hall of Fame numbers, Jones would seem to be a bonanza for the Dodgers. It means that Juan Pierre will play left, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier will fight it out to seewho starts in right, and the Dodgers will have a nice surplus in the outfield.

As Colletti correctly points out, these things always look better in December than in August.

“Remember last year, when we had eight starting pitchers and everybody kept saying that’s too much,” Colletti said. “Well, you saw how that turned out.”

All in all, it was a happy day at Dodger Stadium, where news conferences mingled somewhat awkwardly with a Christmas party and hundreds of school kids, there to get the word from the real Santa.

“Who feeds you? Who buys your clothes? Love your parents,” bellowed Dodgers Special Advisor to Kris Kringle, Tommy Lasorda.

Former Dodger Eric Karros was there to help out, and his presence was a nice reminder of the significance of the acquisition of Jones. Karros was introduced to the kids as the Dodgers’ career home run leader since the team moved to Los Angeles. He hit 270. Jones may have 10 years left in the game and he already has 368.

Yes, Dodger Stadium can be like death row to home run hitters. But Jones clearly has a chance to be the big bat that fans here have been missing since the Fox geniuses sent away Mike Piazza.

So the Dodger pieces are starting to fit the puzzle. For example, Colletti said that having Jones in the middle of the batting order allows him and Manager Joe Torre to take a longer look at the third base situation, to see if Nomar Garciaparra can return to 2006 form or if youngster Andy LaRoche is the answer.

Today will bring the storm clouds, though, and even Santa Tommy will have a tough time Ho Ho Ho-ing over what the Mitchell Commission is likely to bring to baseball.

The expectations is that names will be named. Prominent names. Players who autographed a ball for your 10-year-old last year will be labeled a drug cheat this year. All evidence points to chaos ahead. If you think this is the end, figure it is just the beginning.

Commissioner Bud Selig will have his answer to an angry Congress, which called him out, pointed its finger and said, in essence, he should have never let things get to this point. It wanted action, and Selig has now, presumably, delivered, at huge expense and amid months of escalating speculation and drama.

The chapters ahead are even juicier than those we’ve already read.

How will the accused players and their agents react? How substantial will the evidence be? What was the due process, or was there any? Will fingers point all the way back to team management in the ‘90s, which tended to look the other way, or will the bull’s-eye be only on alleged cheating players?

Will sports pages during the 2008 baseball season have more about left fielders or lawsuits? Will Selig wade into the middle of the storm to battle more, or will he offer this as his last word of closure en route to retirement?

It was hard to tell if Colletti expected lightning to strike home or elsewhere; hard to tell if he knew whether any Dodgers were on the Mitchell list.

“I applaud Selig,” Colletti said. “We have to get it right. The game needs to be played right.”

Jones, presumably not on the list and fearing nothing, responded to questions about the Mitchell Report like a player would. He wants the report out, not so much for what actions it might lead to, but to get it over with.

“Hopefully,” he said, “it will come out and we’ll be done and set.”

Won’t happen that way, Andruw. But welcome to L.A.

Hope you hit lots of homers and we find some space to write about them on the front sports page, right next to the pictures of lawyers and your peers, going in for their depositions.

Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. For previous columns, go to latimes.com/dwyre.