Now that his 31-game hitting streak is history, Kevin Hooper can pay more attention to baseball’s labor talks.

Hooper, a 25-year-old Lawrence High product, plays second base and shortstop for the Calgary Cannons, Triple-A farm team of the Florida Marlins.

Hooper, it goes without saying, would love to make his major-league debut when the rosters expand to 40 on Sept. 1. Problem is, the players may shut the season down on Aug. 30.

“It looks like they’re getting closer to settling,” Hooper said about the player-management discussions. “I guess we’ll just have to wait until it happens.”

In the meantime, all Hooper can do is take care of business after his minor-league, season-best hitting streak ended earlier this week.

“It was a nice little joyride,” Hooper said by phone from Oklahoma City, where the Cannons are playing this weekend. “I got my name out there, I guess. Everybody had fun with it.”

When Hooper started the streak on July 4, he was hitting .263. When it ended, his average had climbed to .293. Not long after his sizz began, Hooper went on the disabled list with strained wrist ligaments.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever been on the DL in professional ball,” said Hooper, now in his fourth pro season after being the Marlins’ eighth-round draft pick in 1999 out of Wichita State.

Hooper suffered the injury while diving for a ball on the artificial turf during a game in Edmonton.

“It was sore for awhile,” he said. “It still bothers me sometimes.”

Not enough to keep him out of the lineup, of course.

“You’ll never be 100 percent. You’re always going to have knick-knack injuries,” Hooper said. “You just have to play through them.”

Those who know Hooper know his wrist must have been terribly painful to prevent him from suiting up because he has been an overachiever since his pre-teen days in the Douglas County Amateur Baseball Association.

Anyway, Hooper came off the DL with a vengeance to produce the longest hitting streak in the minors in four years. Curiously, the only longer streak in professional baseball this season was put together by the player ahead of him in the Florida organization  Marlin’s second baseman Luis Castillo (35 games).

“He’s real comfortable at the plate,” Calgary manager Dean Treanor said of Hooper. “He’s really grown.”

Treanor didn’t mean physically. At 5-foot-10 and 160 pounds, Hooper isn’t much bigger than he was when he played shortstop for Lawrence High. Critics have always used his size against him.

Wichita State was reluctant to give him a scholarship, yet finally acquiesced and Hooper became a standout for the Shockers at both second base and shortstop.

“After he had been there for awhile,” said Lee Ice, who coached Hooper in the Lawrence Legion program, “Wichita State called and asked if we had any more Kevin Hoopers up there.”

Hooper always seems to be surprising somebody. Last summer he was projected to spend the entire season in Class A ball, but the Marlins promoted him to Double-A and he hit .308. Last spring he was scheduled to return to Double-A until Treanor intervened.

“I said to myself,” Treanor said, “there was no way I was breaking camp and not bringing this guy with me. He’s the kind of guy you always want on your roster.”

For his part, Hooper seemed just as happy to be in Oklahoma City as he is to own that 31-game hitting streak. He was able to drive to Wichita, visit the coaches at WSU and hook up with his girl friend who teaches in the Wichita suburbs.

At the same time, his mother, who works in a Lawrence bank, drove to Oklahoma City to watch him play.

Hooper’s happiness meter would climb a few more notches, of course, if the impending strike is settled and the Marlins add him to their roster on Sept. 1. Still, Hooper has been in pro ball long enough to know never to count unhatched chickens.

“It’s a crazy business sometimes,” he said. “You think things will happen and they don’t, and you think things won’t happen and they do.”