Torre was added to subtract a division

VERO BEACH, Fla. -- So far, they smile and hug and make nice.

Jeff Kent spends 20 minutes working on a swing with Andy LaRoche.

Nomar Garciaparra spends quiet moments joking with locker neighbor James Loney.

Everybody watches Matt Kemp’s baserunning blunder, and nobody says a word.

So far this spring, the Dodgers veterans and kids look nothing like the factions whose ugly September fight cost a team its season and a manager his job.

“This is family again,” Loney says.

But look closely. Listen carefully.

The same ingredients that exploded in last year’s turmoil still exist.

The same competing interests. The same diverse opinions. The same short fuses.

In one corner are veterans at the end of their Dodgers careers.

In the other corner are kids at the threshold of their Dodgers careers.

The Dodgers are family right now, sure, anybody can be a family when life is a lazy exhibition.

But come opening day, it could all change at the drop of a fly ball, and they all know it.

“Nobody can sit here and tell you it won’t happen again, nobody knows that,” said pitcher Derek Lowe. “People don’t change. People are who they are. It’s all about making the right choices.”

Late last season, the kids made the choice to laugh too loudly and run too easily and seemingly care too little.

The veterans made a choice to rip them for it.

This year’s clubhouse has the same youthful energy with potentially five kid contributors in Kemp, Loney, LaRoche, Andre Ethier and Russell Martin.

This year’s clubhouse also has the same veteran edginess, with Kent, Lowe and Garciaparra all in the final years of their contracts.

So what’s to keep it from blowing up again?

“Experience,” said Jeff Kent.

“Winning,” said Juan Pierre.

“Hmmmm,” said Joe Torre.

Experience and winning would help, but the answer can be found in the “Hmmmm.”

Yeah, this is all about Joe Torre.

This is what he must do. This is a reason why he is here.

Torre is not just a manager, he’s a soother, a fixer, a closer.

Where other managers blink, Torre shrugs.

Where other managers scream, Torre just shows up.

He was hired not only for his resume, but his gravitas. The kid-veteran conflict is still so fresh and tender, it can only be squashed by this giant presence.

Amazingly, Torre has not said one word to his team about last year’s problems.

But quietly, he has talked to veterans, he has talked to kids, he has met with coaches, and here’s what he thinks:

“Handling this, after where I’ve been for the last 12 years?”

He smiled and shook his head.

Again and again and again.

First, Torre doesn’t think it was a big deal.

“You have to understand, everything in this game starts small, everything,” he said. “From what everybody told me, this was a mountain that came out of a molehill.”

Indeed, it began small.

A vet didn’t like Loney’s approach during a certain at-bat. Another vet didn’t like the way Kemp ran on a certain count.

A kid thought Kent was being standoffish. Another kid thought Luis Gonzalez was being conniving.

Little things, silly things, bubbling things that burst in late September when Kent finally said what nearly every veteran in the clubhouse had been thinking.

Followed by Loney and Kemp’s saying what every kid in the clubhouse had been thinking.

It was rip upon rip, the unchecked molehills sprouting into an Everest-sized issue in which everybody was right, and everybody was wrong, and the biggest losers were the Dodgers.

Torre says the secret is to walk around the yard enough to recognize, and step upon, those molehills.

“That’s what my coaches and I do,” he said. “We need to be aware of what is going on in that clubhouse, and when certain things start to bubble up, we will be there step in.”

Torre said the conversation with a fighting kid and veteran is a simple one.

“I ask them, ‘You guys have an issue, what are you going to do about it?’ ” he said. “I tell them, ‘You guys have a problem, get it fixed.’ ”

Like his coach Larry Bowa, Torre starts the season with a separate message for the kids and veterans.

To the kids: “You are crazy if you don’t take advantage of the experienced guys.”

To the veterans: “I want you to speak up if something is bothering you, but I want you to go right to the person.”

If it seems Torre is favoring the veterans, well, he has more postseason victories than any manager in baseball history (76) thanks mostly to veterans.

“There’s a lot of passion in this game, and I’ll never try to keep guys from expressing themselves,” he said.

If it seems Torre is wary of kids, well, his New York Yankees usually traded those kids for championships.

“Kids try to be as good as they can be, and that sometimes leads to tunnel vision, where they lose sight of the big picture, which is winning,” he said.

But Torre said he will not play favorites, because that would lead to greater divisions.

“You just try to make sense of it all,” he said. “You just try to find a way to get through it.”

For now, the sense is there, although the memories are still strong.

“Last year, we didn’t get it,” Kent said. “We just didn’t get it.”

This year, Joe Torre must give it to them.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.