The names of the teams and leagues would change, and so would the colors of the jerseys and the leaves. Even the mother’s name would change from Claudia Hooper to Claudia Jones, yet the message that violated her ears remained pretty much the same.

“He can’t hurt us,” were the insults hurled as her son came to the plate. “Look at him. He’s too little.”

And the mother would remain silent. She bit her tongue for so many years, it’s a wonder she can still talk. And it’s a good thing, too, because the last thing a small boy needs is his mother fighting his battles for him. That happens, and one searing insult rises above the din of all the others: “Momma’s boy.”

“I never said a word,” Claudia Jones said.

Now she doesn’t have to move her lips. The Baseball Encyclopedia says it all for her. Her boy’s name is right there in black and white: Kevin Hooper. He’s the entry right after Harry Hooper, who played 17 seasons for the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox from 1909 to 1925, and right before Mike Hooper, who played three games for the 1873 Baltimore Marylands.

How’s this for the biggest shocker ever: The player legendary Wichita State coach Gene Stephenson proudly refers to as “the smallest Shocker ever” is in the big leagues, smack-dab in the middle of a pennant race. That would be the same player who weighed 129 pounds when he enrolled at Wichita State.

Hooper comes to Kauffman Stadium tonight with his Detroit Tigers teammates for the opener of a three-game series against the Kansas City Royals. Lawrence will be well represented. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 friends and family members are expected at each game.

Lawrence's Kevin Hooper, top right and second from right in the front row, played youth ball for the First Bank Bullets when his major league dreams were in their infancy.

A graduate of Lawrence High, Hooper was recalled from the Toledo Mudhens on Sept. 4, the second call to the major leagues in as many seasons for the middle infielder a few months shy of his 30th birthday. He’s been used primarily as a pinch runner.

Last season, Hooper was called up briefly and sent back down a couple of weeks before the Tigers came to Kansas City. He has played in 12 major league games and is 1 for 7 at the plate.

“There were a lot of people in Lawrence who didn’t think I’d ever make it because of my size,” Hooper said via cell phone during an interview that took place while he was shopping with wife Lindsey on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. The couple’s baby, Lucy, is 15 months old. “And there were a lot of people in Lawrence who thought I would make it.”

Born prematurely in Lawrence on Dec. 7, 1976 to David and Claudia Hooper, Kevin James Hooper weighed 6 pounds, 2 ounces and was 19 inches long. His size wasn’t an issue yet. His baseball passion soon entered the equation.

From the time he was 3, his mother said, he expressed a belief he would be a major league baseball player when he grew up. The problem was, he never grew to the size of a major league player, though he now is listed at 5-foot-10 and 160 pounds.

To say that he reached his goal all on desire would be an insult to everyone who pursued a dream relentlessly and didn’t have the talent. It also would be to under-rate Hooper’s physical tools, the best of which are speed and quick, reliable hands. Both his parents were successful softball players, so it’s easy to see where he inherited the athletic genes.

Still, passion was the overriding factor.

Brad Stoll, now coach of Lawrence High’s baseball team, is a few years older than Hooper and a lifelong friend. Their fathers played on the same softball team.

“My dad always talks about how Kevin was always out there in the parking lot, tugging on his dad’s pant leg or my dad’s, challenging them, saying, ‘Come on, see if you can get one past me,'” Stoll said. “If you didn’t know him like we did, you wouldn’t walk in there and say this kid is going to be an All-American and an eighth-round draft pick, a fan favorite at Wichita State to the point where every time he’d come to the plate the fans would go nuts, and every minor league stop along the way people would just love watching him play.”

America loves the underdog who never stops trying.

Kevin Hooper, second from left in the front row, played American Legion baseball with the Lawrence Raiders in the mid-1990s.

“He’s got no dog in him,” Stoll said. “He’s not going to walk out of the box on a routine flyball. He’s going to run out every play as hard as he possibly can. He appreciates where he is. He’s not a guy who’s ever going to big-league anybody.”

Stoll thought about the phrase he used and commented on it.

“Big-league somebody, I love that saying,” he said. “When you think about it, it had to start with some big-league player not giving some kid the time of day.”

On the other end of the big-leaguer spectrum and the telephone was Hooper’s voice, calling back the day after the interview to add one more sentiment: “I wanted to make sure I said something nice about my family. I’m not where I’m at without my family. I want to make sure my mom, dad, stepdad, brother and sister, and my wife of course, know how much I appreciate them.”

Obviously, Hooper has forgiven his mom and stepdad Mike Jones, with whom he lived from age 11, for what he at the time he considered cruel and unusual punishment, the “one and only time he got into trouble,” according to his mom.

“The rule was the three boys (brother Dave Jr., step-brother Matt Jones) could play baseball anywhere except in the house,” remembered Claudia, who works downtown for InTrust Bank. “You know those little bitty wooden bats? When I came home from shopping, one of those bats was stuck in the wall. The boys tried to hang something over the bat, tried to lie about it. Sarah was little, and she said, ‘Momma, you’re not going to believe what the boys did.’ Dave had just started driving, and we took his car away from him for a couple of weeks. We took the TV away from Matt, and Kevin had to miss one baseball game. Oh my God, he was heartbroken. He never got in trouble again because he was never going to take a chance at that being taken away from him again.”

Even his youth baseball coach at the time, current Lawrence High football coach Dirk Wedd, called Claudia and gave it his best sales pitch, using the verbal skills he uses on the big boys he spots in the hallways of LHS in trying to convince them to become part of the tradition. Wedd tried every angle to guilt the mother into changing her mind. He talked about how it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the players. Mike and Claudia didn’t bend, and Kevin and his brothers never again broke the rule.

Said Wedd: “Kevin’s the all-time little-guy-makes-it-big story. I remember picking Kevin up for a game once, and he’s throwing the ball against the wall of the house, peeling paint, his mother’s yelling at him not to do that, and Kevin’s yelling back, ‘But mom, I have to practice.’ “

Hooper didn’t play varsity until his final two years at LHS, so Dave Jr. didn’t get to team with him. He did remember facing him in an American Legion scrimmage.

Kevin Hooper poses for a photo at Wichita State. Hooper played four seasons for the Shockers, turning down an offer from the Cleveland Indians' organization after his junior year.

“It came down to bases loaded, I was pitching, Kevin was hitting and it went to 3-and-2, and I got him grounding out to second,” Dave said with a hint of pride. “He was always just a skinny little kid who could just play ball, and that’s all he ever wanted to do. … I remember (broadcaster and Hall of Fame player) Joe Morgan making comments that kind of got under my skin when Kevin was playing at Wichita State in the College World Series. He said he was too small. He was the smallest player ever to play in the College World Series, but he wasn’t too small.”

Dave Jr. was in the Army at the time, watching the telecast with a friend in Fort Knox, Ky. He enlisted before telling his parents or girlfriend and served his country for four-and-half years while Kevin pursued a baseball career.

Dave Sr. watched enough baseball in Wichita for both of them.

Now driving a bus for Lawrence Transit, Dave Sr. got used to spending long stretches behind the wheel driving to and from Wichita, often not getting back until after midnight and then waking up early in the morning to go to work.

“It was well worth it,” he said with pride.

Dave Sr. said he would be at every game at the K this weekend: “I hope the rain holds off.”

Dave Jr., Matt, Mike and Claudia Jones won’t be able to make Saturday’s game. Matt recently married in Jamaica, and the couple is having a reception Saturday night. Kevin said he was going to go directly from the game to the reception.

In his Detroit Tigers uniform?

“I don’t know about that,” he said. “It’s nice how it worked out so that I can go.”

Stoll said he would try to make the late innings of the game Friday night, after he fulfills his obligation of driving one of the convertibles during halftime ceremonies at the Lawrence High homecoming football game against Leavenworth.

It was as a spectator at an LHS football game during his senior year that one of Hooper’s buddies let it slip that Wichita State would be scouting him the next day.

“It was supposed to be a secret, I guess, but he just couldn’t hold it in,” Hooper remembered.

What happened that day is a story Hooper uses to inspire children when he speaks every February at Stoll’s clinic after driving up from Wichita, his offseason home.

No Lawrence baseball story would be complete without a connection to the Ice family. Lee Ice coached Hooper in fall ball – “and what a coach he was,” Kevin said – and wrote his name in the No. 9 hole when Hooper was a junior. Ice had played in a summer league years earlier with Wichita State pitching coach Brent Kemnitz. Ice urged Kemnitz to have someone take a look at a Lawrence player, even though Ice warned, he was more than half a foot short of 6-feet tall at the time. Wichita State had enough middle infielders, but something in the way Ice talked up the speedy little guy resonated.

Kevin Hooper, second from left, celebrates with his Detroit Tigers teammates as they defeated the Texas Rangers on Sept. 12 in Detroit.

With Shockers assistant Jim Thomas watching, Hooper went 0 for 6 in a doubleheader, Ice said, wearing typical fall ball attire, “sweat pants and batting practice tops.”

“He timed him in 4.2 or 4.3 going down to first base, and his arm had a little carry to it,” Ice said.

Thomas also liked the way Hooper sprinted to and from his position, liked it so much that two weeks later Stephenson was in the Hooper basement on Tall Grass Drive offering a scholarship.

“I told them about him, and Kevin did the rest,” Ice said. “They never saw him before that day he went 0 for 6 and they never saw them after that, and they offered him a scholarship. … Anybody who’s ever coached Kevin will say he made himself a player. It wasn’t like a Lee Stevens at age 15 hits five out into the trees at Ice Field.”

Wedd urges every young athlete to study what happened the day Hooper went 0 for 6 while being evaluated.

“Anyone who thinks it doesn’t matter how you carry yourself on the field, how you hustle on and off the field, how you wear your uniform, how you respect the game, just has to look at Kevin Hooper,” Wedd said.

Doing all that, Hooper, who said he wanted to coach baseball after his playing career, quickly became a fan favorite at Wichita State.

Cleveland Indians scout Steve Abney, a Lawrence resident, made Hooper a $20,000 offer as a late-round selection after his junior season, which Abney said led to Stephenson to holler at him. Hooper, out of loyalty to Wichita State, decided to return to school, thereby surrendering his negotiating leverage. Abney noted that Hooper is a rarity in that he’s a middle infielder from the Midwest, a shortage that mystifies Abney and other baseball talent evaluators.

After his senior season, Hooper was drafted in the eighth round by the Florida Marlins and signed for $17,500. He played in the minor leagues for the New York Yankees and Kansas City Royals organizations as well.

This season at Toledo, Hooper earned $12,000 per month, batted .276, scored 66 runs and drove in 29 in 121 games. On his off day a week ago Thursday, he and seven other Tigers went to Toledo to watch the Mudhens play in the International League playoffs.

“I had mixed emotions getting called up, and it was hard being at that game and not being able to put on a uniform,” said Hooper, who played all nine positions in a game for the Mudhens in 2005. “I played with those guys all year, but don’t get me wrong, I’m where I want to be. I went from one pennant race to another. A lot of players never get to be in one their whole careers, and I was in two this season. I wouldn’t trade being in a pennant race in the big leagues for anything.”

Who would?