A WILL BUT A MIGHTY DIFFICULT WAY

His stomach is covered with shirts, hiding the tender skin that is stuck as many as four times a day with hypodermic needles.

“During the season, I can’t shoot my arms and legs and butt,” Dave Hollins says. “I need them too much.”

His dugout shakes are covered by teammates, who sprint to the clubhouse and bring back little packets of energy gel before anyone notices the Angel third baseman is pale and trembling.

“He gets that look, and I take off,” says Orlando Palmeiro, whose most important pinch-running duties are these. “I know what he needs, and I know he needs it fast.”

His daily struggle is covered by baseball’s meanest stare, a look that goes through strangers, past coaches and friends, a glare fixed on some distant point known only to him.

“I don’t mean to ever appear aloof,” Hollins said. “It’s just that, everyday, it takes everything I got just to get ready to play.”’

What Dave Hollins cannot disguise is his will.

It is there in his sprints to first base on ground balls in the ninth innings of 10-2 defeats.

It is there when he ducks his shoulder into a 95-mph fastball with the bases loaded, taking the hit to score the run.

It has been there throughout a season in which he has helped give the Angels strength . . . while battling his own internal weakness.

Hollins has diabetes.

He also has a .293 average, 11 home runs and 53 runs batted in.

“Fathers should bring their children to the ballpark just to watch this guy play,” says Manager Terry Collins.

Which, for all its basepath-stained wonder, is nothing compared to watching him live.

*

His ninth-inning, two-run double had just given the Angels a 6-5 victory over the Texas Rangers.

The next few moments should have been the happiest of Dave Hollins’ season.

But last week’s celebration scene at Anaheim Stadium only reminded him of his mountain.

While his teammates danced, Hollins stood dazed.

While they were saying all the right things about a pennant race, he could only say, “I was tired, man.”

Because he was.

With his hard play and meal interruption temporarily wrecking his system, Hollins is essentially worthless after a game.

“You have something to say to him, you wait until the next day,” says Angel third-base coach Larry Bowa. “Otherwise it’s like talking to a wall.”

He can barely talk until he has dined on the postgame spread. He spends the next couple of hours walking around the clubhouse as if in slow motion.

After night games he doesn’t leave until as late as 1 a.m., watching the big-screen TV for at least an hour after every other player has departed.

He needs some of that time to wind down. The rest is spent waiting for his final meal of the day, at 2 a.m., before he finally allows himself to sleep two hours later.

“That night after the Texas game, I didn’t mean to sound like it was not a big deal, bro, because it was,” he says. “But until I got in here and got something in my system, I was zoned out.”

Hollins calls everyone “bro.” Once pinned down, he is delightfully warm like that.

He mixes his hard-edged philosophy--”If someone’s not playing hurt, I’ll be in their face”--with laughs about his three children.

Of diabetes, his view is typical:

“I think about cancer, about all the terrible things that can happen to people,” he says. “And I tell you what, bro, I’ll take this.”

His disease--which was discovered three years ago during off-season workouts with the Philadelphia Phillies--is known as Type 1 diabetes.

It is the rarest of two types, affecting only 10% of the 7 million Americans diagnosed with diabetes. It also needs the most daily maintenance.

Diabetics suffer problems related to the production or use of insulin in their bodies, affecting their blood sugar levels.

The problem is more severe in Type 1 sufferers, forcing them to take insulin shots instead of pills. Hollins said his body no longer produces insulin, meaning he is forced to take three or four shots daily.

The insulin shots lower the blood sugar, and a steady diet raises it, leading to a safe equilibrium.

But Hollins’ intense exercise lowers his blood sugar further, meaning he must eat more--and be more careful about his diet--than a normal Type 1 diabetic.

This leaves him susceptible to those shakes on the bench during the eighth innings of hot games, causing teammates to run for food.

It also makes it difficult for him to play on hot days after night games, because he cannot regulate his diet to accommodate two games in a 24-hour period.

Of course, he could always not play as hard. Or, at 31, with World Series and All-Star game appearances, he could just quit.

“Yeah, right,” he says. “You look around, I’m healthier than 90% of the guys in this game. If I keep up this schedule, doctors say I will stay that way.

“Everybody in this room has their struggles. This won’t stop me from doing anything.”

He needs a late-night meal in a strange city on the road? He does what he did recently in Colorado, when he bribed a chef $100 to keep his steakhouse open until Hollins and teammate Tim Salmon could get there.

“No amount of money is too much for me to pay for food,” Hollins says.

The team plane is delayed and he needs an insulin shot?

He keeps his needles in his briefcase, and his dozens of complex carbohydrate candy bars and gels in another shoulder bag.

Restaurants near his Newport Beach home are too crowded for him to have a timely pregame lunch?

Hollins may be the only $3.8-million baseball player who eats every home lunch at Coco’s.

“It’s perfect, because I can get right in, no waiting, good food, me and my newspaper,” he said.

By then, even though he went to bed at 4 a.m., he has already eaten one meal of oatmeal or some quick protein breakfast.

That breakfast is followed by a nap, then lunch, then he goes to the ballpark, where he is probably the only major-leaguer who eats a pregame meal of baked potatoes.

“I even eat when I’m not hungry,” he says. “I don’t have a choice.”

Five meals a day. Six hours of sleep if he’s lucky. As many as four insulin shots.

And already more games--88--than any Angel third baseman since Doug DeCinces 10 years ago.

It didn’t always work like this.

Last year with the Minnesota Twins, in his first full season playing with the disease, Hollins tried to survive with shots and candy bars.

He lost 25 pounds, batted below .200 during a three-month period, and finally figured it out.

Diabetes is like an inside fastball.

You bail out or whine, you don’t stand a chance.

You stand in there and adjust, maybe you do.

“In the beginning, it played with my head,” he says. “I used it as a crutch. And then I learned, you do that, it’s just gonna get worse.”

As the interview ends and warmups begin, Hollins removes a power bar from his locker and carefully places it next to his row of bats. There. Now he’s ready.

“It’s a constant struggle, bro,” he says, smiling. “But I’ll take it.”