"No, there's not," Freel decided Friday.

You're a maniac or you aren't. This is what Freel figures. Once you start playing baseball like Evel Knievel, you can't play any other way.

"I wish I could dial it down, but I can't," Freel said. "Being able to not hold back ... being able to put a smile on somebody's face, let them get every dollar out of their ticket, that's a thrill to me. I want that adrenaline rush."

Some guys play it safe. Others jump off a third-floor balcony and into the motel swimming pool. Freel did that while playing Single-A ball in the Toronto system.

"I just came off a hamstring injury," Freel explained. He did it on a dare. "I got absolutely reamed by the manager. But it was awesome. A real rush, dude."

Did you touch bottom? Three floors is 30 feet. Motel pools don't get much deeper than 8 feet.

"I checked the (water) level" before the jump, Freel said. "It was all good."

It is all good for Freel, who if he weren't playing baseball would be running with the bulls at Pamplona or base-jumping off the Empire State Building.

He once "totaled" the medial collateral ligament in his knee while snowboarding. Is it possible to play the outfield wearing a seatbelt?

Normally, you ask a baseball player mundane things: Who'd you watch growing up? What player did you most admire? Did you always want to be a ballplayer? Those questions don't come up with Ryan Freel. These do:

• How many bones did you break as a kid?

• How was the service at the drive-through window in the emergency room?

• Did you ever ride your bike down a sliding board?

• What's with you and walls?

"I'm trying to test the cement," Freel said.

Earlier this year, during a game at Dodger Stadium, Freel leaped into the stands down the right-field line, chasing a pop. He had a nasty collision with a couple fans. "It was a pretty traumatic situation," he recalled. "I broke a guy's arm and a lady's nose. I've apologized so much."

But?

"If I had to do it all over again, I would. I barely missed the ball. It was a big situation in the game. It was a foul ball four rows up, reachable material, definitely."

We applaud guys who play tag with walls. We love players who donate their shoulders and elbows to the cause of swan-diving for sinking line drives. They "play hard." Freel is a fan favorite because of that. He should still be a fan favorite if he stops, or slows down. It's hard to be loved when you're not in the lineup.

Pete Rose was the rare player who could be reckless and indestructible at the same time. For a decade, Junior Griffey made reckless look elegant. He performed slam-ballet. And then he started getting hurt. Griffey still will test the concrete. But only when he has to.

You don't go all out every day for six months of a baseball season, for the same reason you don't run 4-minute miles in a marathon. Freel disagrees, dude. You guessed he might.

"Dude, I love to crash right into walls," he said. "That's fun to me. I've dreamed all my life of putting on a major-league uniform and playing in front of 30,000 fans."

He isn't going to let a little concrete stand between him and his bliss. Not when a ball is reachable material.

Last week in St. Louis, Freel rammed his knee into the unpadded part of the wall while sliding in pursuit of a foul fly. He was playing as well as he has all season. He hasn't played since. When you ask him his status, he says, "I'll make myself fine by the end of the All-Star break.

"I'm not going to get silly and stupid and try to be a hero," he explained. "But St. Louis has a great team. Every out is crucial with that lineup.

"When we were in Chicago, I asked (umpire) Eric Cooper if you can jump on the dugout and up onto the railing to catch a foul. I asked if I could jump onto a TV camera. He looked at me like I was crazy. Then he said, 'Yeah, you can.' "

Coming soon to a game near you: Crash Test Man climbs a camera.

"If you sit there and try not to get hurt, that's when you get hurt," Ryan Freel figures. "It's all in the Lord's hands, anyway."

The Man has his hands full, doesn't He?

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E-mail pdaughterty@enquirer.com

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