With Two Out, Brooks’ Career Is on Third : Angels: Clutch hitter faces a comeback from surgery and from his worst season. He will be the DH, batting cleanup.

The scar is no more than an inch or two long, a raised slash at the base of Hubie Brooks’ throat. Without realizing it, Brooks traces it with his finger every now and then.

“The only reason I had it done is because I wanted to play baseball,” Brooks said of the surgery that removed a herniated cervical disk from his neck last September. “If I didn’t want to play, I wouldn’t have had it done.”

In his prime, Brooks was among the game’s best clutch players. In 1985, with the Montreal Expos, Brooks became the first National League shortstop to drive in 100 or more runs since Ernie Banks of the 1960 Chicago Cubs. Buck Rodgers, then and now Brooks’ manager, recalls Brooks collected 40 of those RBIs with two outs.

“Those put nails in coffins, two-out runs,” Rodgers said.

A .272 lifetime hitter, Brooks has hit .341 with the bases loaded over 11-plus major league seasons. As recently as 1990 with the Dodgers, he hit .349 with runners on third and .471 with the bases loaded while piling up 91 RBIs.

“It’s probably in my mind that I have to get the job done and not wait for somebody else to do it,” he said. “If I don’t do it, we still have a chance, but I like getting it done myself.”

But he drove in all those runs before his injury, which occurred when he ran into a fence in Philadelphia; and before the surgery that meant his Adam’s apple had to be pushed out of the way so that bone, taken from his right hip, could be grafted onto his neck.

And he did all that before he had turned 35 and before he had hit a personal-low .238 last season for the New York Mets, who traded him to the Angels last Dec. 10 for outfielder Dave Gallagher.

Returning from this injury is the biggest pressure situation Brooks has faced. Hall of Famer Rod Carew, the Angels’ hitting instructor, says Brooks will be as successful under duress now as he ever was.

“He’s got enough left to help any club,” Carew said. “One of the key things is, the older you get, you start finding more discipline in the things you do. He has found the use of his hands is very important, not just upper-body strength--using his hands as compared to trying to muscle the ball.

“He’s been good to work with. He approaches hitting with a purpose in mind, the same thing I’m trying to get everybody to do.”

That purpose is to drive in runs. The Angels, who waved goodby to 182 RBIs when they bought out Dave Winfield’s contract and lost Wally Joyner to free agency, are counting on Brooks to make up for some of that production as their cleanup hitter. He will start the season as the designated hitter and will back up Lee Stevens at first base and Von Hayes in right field, as his fitness allows.

When Brooks is at his peak, Rodgers said: “You’ll see a guy who’ll give you great at-bats with men on base and some of the worst at-bats you’ll ever see when there’s no one on base. When those ducks are on the pond, he concentrates.”

Based as much on his own experience as his observations of Brooks--and speaking still as a hitter--Carew attributed Brooks’ success to his ability to concentrate on the situation at hand.

“That usually happens because (as) we bear down harder, we become a little more selective and get a pitch we can handle and put in play,” Carew said. “Sometimes, when there’s no runners on base, you try to do a little too much.”

Brooks has been doing enough this spring to be cautiously encouraged about his prospects. He is hitting .375--nine for 24--with three doubles and four RBIs in nine games, although he estimated he is about 10% short of his top form.

“There’s times that you don’t feel it’s making progress, that you feel it’s standing still,” said Brooks, a Los Angeles native who attended Dominguez High in Compton and was an All-American at Arizona State. “It’s like any other injury: It’ll come back for a while and then not feel good. I’m going to have more good than bad.

“The doctor (Robert Watkins) explained that the hip was going to be the toughest part. It’s not as sore as it was at first. I had a little bit of a limp a couple of months ago, and I don’t have that now.”

The soreness is the price he pays for correcting the injury that made a shambles of his 1991 season.

“It gradually got worse after it happened,” he said. “I ran into a fence, slipped and fell straight down. It got worse and kept swelling. I kept getting headaches, neck pains, stiffness and pain in my arm. It was not nice.

“A month and a half after I started not being too productive, I started seeing a doctor. They tried to treat it with oral medication and that didn’t work.”

The surgery, performed at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood, was an unqualified success. But, although he felt certain he could play again, he knew it wouldn’t be with the Mets. He “somewhat” asked for a trade and was delighted to land near his home in Chatsworth.

“I wasn’t going to play much, with all the deals they were about to make and everything they had planned,” Brooks said of the Mets. “I just try to put myself in position to play. Once you stop playing (regularly) you never get it back. You’re just going to be a guy sitting on the bench.

“I like to play wherever I can, DH or whatever. But I know there’s going to be situations where they’re going to use me that way. I don’t want to just DH, but if that’s what I have to do at this point, that’s what I’ll do. . . . (Being traded to the Angels) was fine with me, not only because I’m from Southern California but (because) we’ve got a lot of potential here.”

He says that Rodgers will mine that potential.

“You just know he’s going to get the best out of everyone,” Brooks said. “I think he’s the type of manager that he’s going to see what he’s got and takes it from there.”

How far Brooks can go is unclear.

“That’s what we’re here to find out, to get him 100% and see what he can do,” Rodgers said.

If diligence means anything, Carew says Brooks will be productive.

“He knows what he wants to do when he’s up there,” Carew said. “He takes BP the way he approaches the game, using the whole field. You don’t see him trying to swing for the fences. He gets himself ready for the ballgame in the right way.”

Brooks is ready and willing to be counted upon.

“It all depends on how much I play, how many opportunities I have. I know I’ll be fine. Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I think so.”