They provide a physical contrast, to say the least.

Butch Hobson looks lean and athletic, very much like a former University of Alabama football player.

Andy Etchebarren is a short, paunchy Tasmanian devil of a man. When he takes his cap off, there's either severe hat-head or a kind of quasi-punk haircut. Startling, on a 68-year-old.

Both former major league players, they manage Atlantic League rivals Lancaster and York. That means they work for the same company, Opening Day Partners.

Atlantic League managers are actually managers/general managers/player personnel directors, although for only a fraction of the money and prestige than their big-league counterparts and exponentially more long, tedious bus rides.

Etchebarren seems a neat fit for York, a town that always feels a bit edgier, more blue-collar, than ours. He once challenged an opposing player's father to a fight and had to be restrained from backing it up, in the stands, during a Revolution game.

There are Etch T-shirts, which compare him to the guy in the Dos Equis commercial: "He IS, the most interesting manager in the world ... . Stay hungry, my friends."

Hobson has been all over the independent-baseball map and won everywhere. He was brought to Lancaster to make the Barnstormers as successful on the field as at the box office.

Consider that mission accomplished, after the club won a first-half Freedom Division championship and barely lost, to Etchebarren's Revs, in a best-of-five playoff for a berth in the league's championship series. And they drew more fans than last year despite the recession and the endless, endless rain.

"I thought we had a great year," Hobson said Monday, after the Barnstormers lost 5-4 in a 10-inning Game 5. "I just wish we had brought a championship to Lancaster."

He'll get another shot at it next year, club President Jon Danos said Thursday.

"The team accomplished a lot of what we had planned," he said. "We didn't reach the final prize, but overall we're very pleased. Certainly, it was a team that was capable of winning a championship."

Especially as the season started. Hobson believed, in April, that he had put together, "especially offensively, maybe the best team I've had."

Tommy Everidge, a slugging first baseman who was in the majors with Oakland in 2009, found himself looking for a team last winter.

"I wanted to come here when I found out who they already had," Everidge said last week.

There was Lancaster's own Matt Watson, also with big-league experience, most recently last year with the A's. And guys like Terry Tiffee and Kevin Howard and Jerome Williams and Tim Hamulack and Emerson Frostad.

You never heard of them, but baseball people had.

"I knew those guys," Everidge said. "I couldn't believe the team Butch was putting together."

Howard was hitting .381 when he was signed by the Toronto Blue Jays' organization. Frostad, a catcher, was soon scarfed up by the Houston Astros. Tiffee, a third baseman, went to the Yankees' AAA club in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

Hamulack was the closer. He had seven saves and did not allow a run in his time here, before signing with the Cincinnati Reds' organization. Williams, a right-handed starter, went 7-1 with a 2.91 ERA here. He was signed by the Los Angeles Angels, and went 4-0 for them — for the big club — late this season.

The Stormers rolled to a 22-9 start, and six-game lead in the Freedom Division, before the affiliated clubs started lighting up the phone lines.

"That's when Butch's skill, his best skill, worked to our advantage," Danos said.

Hobson found a shortstop, Iggy Suarez, who hit safely in his first 10 at-bats here.

He found an everyday center fielder, Wayne Lydon, and the kind of catcher, Matt Tupman, whose value can't be extrapolated.

He found starting-rotation anchors John Halama and former Philadelphia Phillie J.D. Durbin, and a closer, Jonah Bayliss, who cashed 18 straight save chances.

Batting-order anchors Everidge and Fernando Seguignol stayed all summer and never stopped bashing. Everidge hit .319 and led the AL in home runs, doubles, extra-base hits and slugging percentage. He should be named the league's MVP.

"If I had to be objective about it," Everidge said, "I would definitely vote for myself."

They were essentially a .500 team, quite an achievement with the player movement and little to play for, after that 22-9 start.

The playoff series with York was a gut-wrencher, the Revs winning Games 1 and 2 at home. Halama dominated York in Game 3, and the Barnstormers controlled Games 3 and 4.

The decider Monday came down to a 10th-inning bouncer off the bat of ex-Barnstormer Bryant Nelson toward second, with runners on first and second and one out.

With York having hit into double plays in three of the previous four innings, Etchebarren sent his runners. The ball, York runner Scott Grimes and Lancaster 2B Mejia converged, Mejia thinking DP.

But the ball wasn't hit that hard, and it bounced a little funny, and Mejia retreated a bit, and the ball played him and got through.

That made it 2-1 and opened floodgates. A sac fly and two singles later it was 5-1.

Tiffee, back in town after hitting .345 in AAA, lined a three-run homer to right in the bottom of the inning, but that was it.

Etchebarren pushed a lot of buttons correctly in the series, tweaking his lineup and getting, for example, a home-run and RBI double, late in Game 2, from a backup catcher hitting in the nine-hole.

Hobson was questioning himself afterward.

"The biggest mistake I made was not staying with Hammond longer," meaning Game 5 starter Steve, a lefty who threw six superb innings.

"I didn't manage my bullpen as well as I should have."

No way to know if a club as good as the Stormers were in the spring can be assembled again. But we know the answer to whether one that good can be kept together.

No, it can't. That's just how this league works.

Ballplayers can't have more fun anywhere. But they can make more money, and chase bigger dreams, almost everywhere.

"I enjoyed myself here more than ever," said Everidge, who lives in Northern California and has a wife expecting a daughter. "It's a great place, great fans, great coaching, great everything. But the financial situation is what it is. I can't commit. Things will fall where they fall."

We do know that Butch and Etch will be back. When this ride was over, they hugged.

"Great series," Hobson said. "Then I told him I loved him."

A bit later, he stood in the Clip Joint clubhouse and told his players the same thing.

"They love him, too," Danos said. "For a bunch of guys on one-year contracts, that's amazing."

Mike Gross is assistant sports editor of the Sunday News. Email him at mgross@lnpnews.com.