Hamelin Doesn’t Look Like a Rookie--or Act Like One : Baseball: Royals’ 26-year-old DH, who played at Irvine and Rancho Santiago, has emerged as leading candidate for top AL award.

Bob Hamelin is no ordinary rookie. The statistics that go up in lights when the Kansas City designated hitter steps to the plate tell you that. Emphatically.

But look at him, pushing 27, with a bat and a belly and a No. 3 on his back that inevitably leads people to call him the Babe. Where’s the rookie in a guy who shuffles around the clubhouse in shower shoes with an air that says he’s seen it all, and it’s not half bad?

The only ounce of rookie in all the 235 pounds on Hamelin’s six-foot frame is this: He had played in only 16 major league games in his life before this season. That’s few enough to make you eligible for rookie of the year whether you’re 19 or 98. And Hamelin, with a team-leading 24 homers and 65 runs batted in as well as a .282 average, has emerged as the leading candidate for American League Rookie of the Year--or, who knows, perhaps Rookie of the Strike-Shortened Season.

If Hamelin wins, he’ll earn the oxymoronic distinction of being the oldest rookie of the year in either league since 1986.

Pitcher Todd Worrell, now a Dodger, turned 27 in September of the season he won the NL rookie of the year award as a St. Louis Cardinal in 1986. Hamelin will be 27 on Nov. 29.

“He’s more mature than most rookies,” Royal Manager Hal McRae said.

If you’d told Hamelin six years ago he’d be in the running for rookie of the year in 1994, he wouldn’t have thought that was such great news. As a second-round pick in 1986 from Rancho Santiago College--where he set a state record by hitting 31 homers in a season--Hamelin and most everyone who knew him figured he’d be in the majors long before now.

But chronic back problems derailed his career for parts of four seasons, and after the problem was finally identified as a stress fracture of a vertebra, he underwent surgery in 1991. He finally put together his first full season as a pro last year with triple-A Omaha. Now that he has made it, he’s just glad to finally be where he figured he was headed all along.

“It’s better than Omaha, I know that,” Hamelin said, laughing. “I had enough steak and potatoes there. Kansas City has a lot of steak, too, but it tastes better there.”

Interestingly, part of the reason he’s making such a run for rookie of the year is that, after all he’s been through, Hamelin is no rookie at heart.

“Maybe it’s helped me because I’m a little older,” he said. “Maybe somebody who’s 21 comes up to the major leagues and fails for the first time. But I’ve had adversity in the past. I think maybe having some of the problems I’ve had is going to help me with the slumps or that kind of thing, because I’ve already had some adversity.”

Not much this year, though.

“No,” Hamelin said, laughing. “But I’ve had enough in the past to make up for that.”

Instead of starting hot and flaming out (remember J.T. Snow?), Hamelin has done what most rookies find the hardest to do: He has sustained it. It hasn’t mattered that the pitchers know him now. In fact, he has been on one of his hottest tears lately. He had an eight-game hitting streak stopped Wednesday night, and has hit around .400 over the last three weeks, leaving Bo Jackson’s Royals’ record of 22 homers by a rookie in the dust in the process.

Brent Mayne, who has known Hamelin since Hamelin played at Irvine High School, now dresses next to him in the Royals’ clubhouse. Mayne, a catcher and the son of Mike Mayne, former Orange Coast College baseball coach, has watched hundreds of players try to make the big leagues. He has learned who makes it and who doesn’t.

“I’ll be honest, I never had a doubt in my mind he was capable of all this,” Mayne said. “With my dad coaching, I’ve been around a lot of players. I’ve learned what it takes to be successful. He plays baseball as if he weren’t here, as if he’d be in the Dominican or somewhere playing. It doesn’t revolve around success or failure. It’s what he does.”

Even Hamelin’s back trouble didn’t make Mayne doubt that Hamelin--drafted the year before him--would eventually join him in the big leagues.

“I was always convinced that guys like that are not stoppable,” Mayne said. “Their personality is such that he can’t be put down as long as he keeps trying.”

There are plenty of sluggers and DHs who are no students of the game--plenty aren’t even students of the strike zone. But Mayne remembers how Hamelin would always show up around Orange County.

“College, high school, any game, he’d be there, watching,” Mayne said.

Now Hamelin does his studying on videotape.

“That’s part of my game, part of my success,” he said. “I like to have an idea what’s coming. Everyone’s a little different and has a different way of going about things. Some hitters think too much about it and they’re not going to be successful. I’m the opposite. I like to study and get the best advantage I possibly can. I think that helps me. I think some players feel it hurts them.”

Like many players, he keeps his own notebook on pitchers’ strengths, weaknesses and tendencies. Like about half the Royals’ team, he sits down before a series to look at tape of his previous at-bats against the pitchers he’ll be facing. And like few others, he actually goes back to the video room at Royals Stadium during a game to see what he can pick up from previous at-bats.

“I guess it’s a little luxury of being the designated hitter,” he said. “I don’t have to go out on the field, so I’ve got to kill some time.”

As if he didn’t have to kill enough on his way to the majors.

“It does seem like this is a good reward for all those years,” Mayne said.