Hours before every Lancaster Barnstormers game, home or away, in the cavernous quiet of a ballpark just stretching awake, Butch Hobson goes for a walk.

Just strolls, unhurried, around the perimeter of the field, as many as 15 laps. He's not doing it for exercise; most days, he already has a workout in.

He's doing it, to use the four words Hobson has adopted as a slogan for his ballclub, to "Get his mind right."

Hobson isn't always so serene.

On the second day of the Barnstormers' first trip to the new Atlantic League team in Sugar Land, Texas, Hobson sensed a tired, dead ballclub.

He took from his pocket an ammonia cap. He sometimes pops them under his nose to give himself an old-school boost.

This time he popped it in front of everybody.

"Sniff this … ," he hollered, "and wake the [bleep] up!"

As a major league third baseman, in the 1970s and '80s, Hobson was known as the kind of ballplayer who ran and swung and threw as hard as he could.

"Butch always plays as if there were no game tomorrow," wrote stat guru Bill James in his 1982 Baseball Abstract.

He didn't mean it as a compliment.

"The problem with that," James continued, "is that there is a game tomorrow, and one the day after."

There have been thousands of days-after since. Hobson played eight big-league seasons, mostly for the Boston Red Sox. Then he managed the Red Sox and two Class AAA minor-league teams.

His career went off the rails a bit after he was fired by the Phillies, whose AAA affiliate he'd been managing, in 1996. Then he was discovered by the Atlantic League, independent baseball for players who have for whatever fallen off the big-league track.

The AL allows, or forces, managers to also be general managers, team builders, baseball architects.

Hobson got real good at it, leading teams to the playoffs eight times since 2000, reaching the league championship series three times, and winning three manager-of-the-year awards.

But he's never built anything like the 2012 Lancaster Barnstormers.

"I knew [in April] we had a good group," Hobson said while relaxing in his office before a game Sept. 5.

"How good? You never know until you get into it. As it turned out, we've done an unbelievable job of avoiding those long funks."

That would be an understatement. The Barnstormers are on pace for the best regular season in AL history.

That record currently belongs to the 2009 Somerset Patriots, who went 86-54, and won the league championship.

The Barnstormers are 85-48, meaning they need to win two of their last seven to eclipse Somerset.

Lancaster also has the best winning percentage, .639, in American pro baseball in 2012, not counting short-season or instructional leagues.

The playoffs begin Sept. 26.

"I'm proud of the position we're in," Hobson said. "I'm ecstatic to be around a group of individuals who love to play 99 percent of the time."

The numbers cascade: The Barnstormers own a .300 team batting average. The league record is .302.

Barnstormers are first (outfielder Blake Gailen, .335), second (Fehlandt Lentini, .328) and third (Adam Godwin, .325) in the league in hitting.

Lentini with 167 and Godwin with 163 are within reach of the league's single-season record of 179 hits.

The offense leads the league in hits, home runs, total bases, stolen bases ("I like that," Hobson said), on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

Largely because Clipper Magazine Stadium is an extreme hitter's park, the Barnstormers had never, before this year, finished in the top half of the league in ERA. This group leads the league by nearly a third of a run per game.

The top four starters, Alan Johnson (14-5), J.D. Durbin, John Halama and Dwayne Pollok, have 13 wins or more through 130 games. Pollok leads the league in ERA (2.22). Closer Tim Hamulack has 32 saves and a 2.00 ERA.

Last season, his first in Lancaster, Hobson put together a team as impressive on paper, certainly offensively, as this year's. Built around the ballpark, it was heavily reliant on home-run hitting.

That team got out of the gate fast, but was gutted by players signing with affiliated teams. It won the first-half Freedom Division title but lost in game five of a best-of-five with the rival York Revolution in the playoffs.

This year's edition is more athletic, faster and aggressive.

"That's the way I've been since day one," said Godwin, a classic speedy center fielder/leadoff guy. "I'd rather steal a couple bags than hit a home run."

The Barnstormers have done all this despite an off-year by Tommy Everidge, who won the league's Most Valuable Player Award in 2011.

"You keep waiting for that powder keg to go off," said Dave Collins, the Barnstormers' veteran play-by-play broadcaster.

There is one big thumper: DH/OF Ryan Harvey, aka Johnny Bravo (because he looks a little like him) and Thor (because he swings a little like him).

Harvey/Bravo/Thor had one home run and 10 RBI on June 20. Since then he's hit .330 with 26 home runs, including by all accounts some of the longest shots the AL has ever seen, and 65 RBIs in 65 games.

The Stormers cruised to the AL first-half pennant with a 45-25 mark. Unlike many teams that clinch a playoff berth in June, they haven't eased off the gas. From Memorial Day through Labor Day, the Barnstormers were a surreal 64-27.

Somewhere in that stretch, the team's management realized something special, and marketable, was going on.

The promotional heat turned up, and came with a remarkable offer: If you buy a ticket to a Barnstormers home game and they lose, you can redeem the ticket for free admission to a subsequent 2012 game.

"When we realized the team had a chance to break the all-time [AL wins] record, something tangible like that, it was natural for us to get energized internally," club President Lisa Riggs said Thursday.

"Out in the community, it's been fascinating to see how many people are aware of what's going on."

People close to the team have no doubt as to the source of all this.

General Manager Kristen Simon said, "The dynamic that exists in that clubhouse is not, I would think, easy to create."

"It starts with Butch," Godwin said. "With him, if you're not a great guy, you're probably not a Barnstormer."

Hobson, like Godwin, was born in Alabama, where, as Hobson put it, "Your mama don't feed you if you don't play football."

Butch's dad was a football coach, and sent his son off the play for the biggest legend among them, Bear Bryant, at the University of Alabama.

Hobson was better at baseball, but admits that, "I played baseball with a football mentality."

He says he failed to run hard to first base only once, in Milwaukee, when he had a bad hamstring, fell as he made contact with a check swing, and by the time he rose the Brewers were already throwing the ball around the infield.

"Some old [bleep] cursed me out anyway," he said.

His standards are high.

Hobson said he talked to his team, a couple of weeks ago, about their attitude toward setting the AL record. He could have gone either way. The championship is all he's really after.

They wanted the record. Badly.

So he wrote "90-50" — a projected final record — in big letters on a board in the clubhouse.

"We're going to have to treat very game, from here on out, like a playoff game," he said.

So when somebody throws to the wrong base or gets picked off or boots a ground ball, he reminds them, over and over, that, "We're not gonna win a championship like that."

"They know when I'm mentally tired, without yelling and screaming," Hobson said. "You can be physically tired, but you can't be mentally tired. If you are, just tell me, 'Butch, I'm not here today.' "

Get your mind right.

Coaches in all sports talk about teams being like families. Managing in the Atlantic League, a bunch of guys making little money, sharing brutal bus rides and spending ungodly amounts of time together, have to live it.

That's where the Bear Bryant comes out on Hobson.

"Every Sunday, we watched film," Hobson remembered. "Every week, he'd tell us, 'Call your mama. Tell her you're OK.' "

One more thing, as he walked out the door: "I love every one of you."

The Barnstormers are the best team in their league. It's not close. But in a short playoff series, they could easily get beat, even get swept. It wouldn't really even be an upset. It's just the nature of the sport.

Hobson considers that for a minute, even sort of acknowledges it.

"Even if you're doing what you should do… somebody hits a blooper down the line … ."

Then he pushes it aside.

"After a while, that's gonna go away," he said. "I promised people a championship. It's not an option to not win it."

mgross@lnpnews.com