Fullmer Never Gets His Fill of Hits : Baseball: Hungry 16-year-old slugger leads Sepulveda into the American Legion Area 6 tournament.

The word leaked out on Brad Fullmer almost as soon as he enrolled at Montclair Prep a few years back.

Hide the baseballs, guard your lunch pails.

“We were told, ‘Give him three meals and four at-bats a day and he’ll be happy,’ ” said P.C. Shaw, coach of Fullmer’s Sepulveda American Legion team.

An addendum: Tell the outfielders to back up.

Fullmer, who will be a junior at Montclair Prep in the fall, has emerged as one of the top prospects in his high school class, and has helped lead Sepulveda to the District 20 championship. Sepulveda (22-6) will open play in the Area 6 tournament against Camarillo at 12:30 p.m. today at Moorpark College.

Fullmer’s appetite for production has made him one of the area’s players to watch--irrespective of age.

“He’s a good as any 16-year-old anywhere,” Shaw said. “His stats, they’re just, well, amusing.”

Fullmer’s numbers might generate a few laughs for Shaw, but they are no laughing matter for area pitchers. Or members of his family.

Fullmer’s dad, Marv, gets the unenviable task of feeding Brad fastballs in offseason batting practice. And in Brad’s case, the son never sets.

“We’ve got a big bucket of balls and we stay out there for as long as his arm holds up or until the sun goes down,” Brad said. “He’s come home with ice bags on his arm many times.”

The work has paid off in frozen ropes aplenty. Fullmer leads Sepulveda and ranks among district leaders in hits (42), batting average (.462), runs batted in (40) and doubles (12).

It is no anomaly. Fullmer was one of three non-seniors in the starting lineup at Montclair Prep in the spring. He led the team in home runs with five and was third in RBIs with 27. All he has done this summer is improve.

Fullmer (5-foot-11, 170 pounds) throws right and bats left, a potent mix that carries all of the thunder of a left-right combination to the chops. “The ideal situation is to be an infielder who bats left and throws right,” said Walt Steele, Fullmer’s coach at Montclair Prep. “That’s what everybody (recruiters) wants to see.”

Fullmer is not an infielder just yet. Though Steele plans to play Fullmer at second base for the next two years, Steele believes Fullmer probably is “better suited to third base.”

Yet Fullmer has changed his position so often, he might be better suited for a straitjacket.

In the spring, Fullmer was one of three candidates for shortstop, but failed to earn the starting nod because of his lack of quickness, Steele said. He played some at third base when fellow sophomore Justin Paperny was injured, then moved to designated-hitter.

The plan this summer was to play Fullmer at second, but Shaw could not bear to remove Shad Knighton--and his .385 batting average--from the lineup.

All of these elements have conspired to send Fullmer into the outfield, where nobody has confused him with Andy Van Slyke. More like Dick Van Dyke.

“I’m not too smooth out there,” said Fullmer, whose bedroom walls are festooned with posters of such left-handed bombers as Will Clark and Don Mattingly. “I haven’t played out there much, but I guess as long as I make the play, it doesn’t matter what it looks like.”

It is an altogether different picture at the plate. Fullmer has struck out just nine times in 91 at-bats for Sepulveda, a solid ratio for a No. 3 hitter who is expected to drive in runs.

In fact, if it wasn’t for Encino-Crespi right-hander Jeff Suppan, the class of the Class of ’93 pitching crop, Fullmer would have batted above .500 this summer. In eight at-bats against Suppan, Fullmer struck out seven consecutive times and lined out to left.

In general, though, Fullmer’s combined statistics from the past five months are close to monstrous. He is a combined 66 for 155 (.426) with seven home runs and 66 RBIs. He has hit safely in 22 of his past 25 games for Sepulveda.

At the completion of the 23-game regular season, Fullmer ranked fourth among District 20 players in batting average (.479), was tied for third in doubles (10) and second in RBIs (29).

Things are going so well that Fullmer can’t even blow it when he tries. In Sunday’s District 20 championship game against Woodland Hills West, Fullmer found himself on first base with Russell Ortiz at the plate. Ortiz worked the count to 3-and-0, and much to everyone’s surprise, Fullmer misread a sign from Shaw and stole second base.

Shaw ambled out to second, where he no doubt asked how Fullmer had heretofore managed to carry a grade-point average of 3.8 in college preparatory courses. It was Fullmer’s lone stolen base of the summer.

“I said, ‘Think about it. You’re not fast. Did I give you a sign or something?’ ” Shaw said, laughing.

One pitch later, Shaw, coaching from the box at third, waved the head-for-home sign as Fullmer scored on Ortiz’s base hit and Sepulveda went on to defeat the two-time defending district champions, 12-3.

It was the second trophy in a matter of weeks for Fullmer and most of his teammates, who finished 21-3 and won their second consecutive Southern Section 1-A Division championship two months ago for Montclair Prep. For Sepulveda and Montclair Prep, Fullmer has driven in 66 runs in 52 games.

“The bottom line is that there are hitters, and there are hitters in pressure situations,” Steele said. “He’s the guy you want up there with guys on the pond.

“With two outs and two strikes, he will hit a bullet somewhere.”

It seems that Fullmer has shot a few holes in the description of his former youth-league coach, who long ago uttered that all Fullmer would need were a few cold cuts at lunch and some hot cuts in the afternoon.

Fullmer sometimes prefers a diet of fastballs over food.

“He’ll come up and say, ‘I’m not going to eat lunch today. Wanna come over and see me take some swings?’ ” Steele said. “He’s always putting in the extra work.”