Man of Steal: Reds prospect Billy Hamilton has 113 stolen bases and counting

MOBILE, Ala. -- From the top rows of Hank Aaron Stadium, the chorus of crickets and frogs is getting loud on a damp, slow night in the Southern League. Inside the ballpark, it's pretty quiet in the late innings, with maybe 150 fans sticking around.

Until Billy Hamilton is up.

"Here he comes!" bellows a fan in the box seats. "He's going to the Hall of Fame!"

The Cincinnati Reds prospect is blazing around the bases this summer, on track to set the professional record for steals in a season. The wiry, 21-year-old rocket went into the weekend with a combined 113 stolen bases for Double-A Pensacola and Class A Bakersfield. Come Monday, he'll have 35 games left to swipe the mark of 145 set by Vince Coleman in 1983. "I can't be caught," Hamilton says, nonchalantly.

OK, that's a bit of an overstatement. He's been nabbed 25 times, with pitchers trying all sorts of tricks to stop him. But he keeps on running.

"That's part of the makeup of a base-stealer," Coleman said Friday in a telephone interview. "I haven't seen the young man, I haven't spoken to him. But I keep getting calls and emails about him."

The buzz really began to pick up at the All-Star Futures Game, when Hamilton already had 104 steals for Bakersfield -- the team is named the Blaze, fittingly. He tripled in the showcase, then scored when the pitcher fielded a comebacker, got distracted watching him dance off the bag, and made a three-base throwing error to first. When Hamilton returned to the dugout, Hall of Famer George Brett kidded him. "He said I should've stopped at first base on the hit, then stolen second and third for fun," Hamilton said.

More recently, there was the YouTube video of his inside-the-park home run. He circled the bases in 13.8 seconds and scored standing up. It also wreaked havoc for Pensacola play-by-play radio announcer Tommy Thrall. Once he saw the centerfielder corral the ball, Thrall said he looked toward second base to spot Hamilton "and there was no one there. He was already rounding third."

Hamilton, who credits his former minor-league manager Delino DeShields with teaching him the art of stealing, is aware of how he makes other teams jittery. There have been dozens of wild pitches, balks and wild throws when he's on base.

"I can see the guys in the other dugout coming to the top step when I get on first," he said. "It's not like they want me to get on base, but I can hear them . . . 'Run, Billy, run!' "

Billy's always running.