Whether he’s taking one for the team, hitting a grand slam or just playing his all-out brand of baseball, Angels shortstop David Eckstein always seems to factor in the outcome of a game.

After every game, on the ride home from the ballpark, Angels shortstop David Eckstein calls his father in Seminole, Fla.

Like most parents, Whitey Eckstein can be his son’s toughest critic.

“He won’t really give me tips or anything like that,” Eckstein says of those conversations with his father, “but I better have had a good game. That’s all I’m going to say. Otherwise, I’ll know that I didn’t have a good game.”

No problem.

It’s been hard for Eckstein’s father, or anyone else, to find much fault with David Eckstein’s play this year.

The 27-year-old University of Florida product has been a catalyst to the surprising Angels all year long, his unlikely success a microcosm of his team’s surprising run to postseason play.

His batting average consistently hovered around .300. There were three grand slams this season, two of them coming in back-to-back games against Toronto on April 27-28.

“Before this year,” Eckstein says, “I’d never hit one anywhere.”

The ones he hit this year came only through perfect placement, but that’s part of the Ecks Factor, that uncanny ability Eckstein seems to have to positively affect the outcome of games.

“The balls barely cleared the wall,” he says. “They landed in the front row.”

Eckstein led the American League in being hit by pitches, something that’s always been part of his game. “I’ve been hit by pitches all my life,” Eckstein says. “It’s part of the game.”

Generously listed at 5-8, Eckstein crowds the plate without fear. Probably because he knows what real courage is all about, and it doesn’t involve getting plunked by a Roger Clemens fastball.

Growing up in Florida, Eckstein didn’t even need to leave his own house to find inspiration. His older brother, Kenny, and two sisters, Christine and Susan, all battled kidney ailments that required dialysis and, ultimately, transplants.

“That’s been a big-time inspiration,” he says. “It’s hard to watch someone you love go through that. If I could have changed places with them, I would have.”

Instead, Eckstein could only watch. But if three of Eckstein’s siblings were organ recipients, they were also donors.

Much of their spirit ended up in David’s blood.

“Knowing that they would never have the opportunity to go out and play at the competitive level,” David says, “I will never take a day for granted.”

He never has.

Eckstein plays baseball like it means everything because, in a way, it does. But he also knows, in the grand scheme of things, it'’ meaningless.

”When you see your oldest brother and two sisters all go through complete renal failure to where they had to go on dialysis, it’s tough. One sister for six months and my older brother and older sister did it for two years. It puts a lot of things in perspective when you go out and play the game. Baseball is very important, yes, but it’s not your life.”

Maybe that’s why he can laugh about being mistaken for a bat boy. Or at all the heckling he hears on the road.

Eckstein’s passionate play is the kind that endears him to people in his home park and endlessly annoys fans on the road.

Regardless of where he’s playing, there were plenty of people who believed Eckstein’s act would wear thin, that he’d have no staying power.

“A lot of people may have thought I couldn’t keep up that pace,” he says. “Just the way I go about playing the game. In my pregame, I go all out. During the game, I run everywhere, but that’s the only way I know how to play. That’s the only way that keeps me ready for each pitch. I’ve done it all my life, so I don’t see why I won’t be able to keep on doing it.”

Quite often, Eckstein hears voices while he is in the on deck circle, loosening up for his next at bat. The fact that Eckstein can’t seem to stand still, is constantly twirling bats above his head and jumping up and down, no doubt contributes to the cat calls he hears from Safeco Field to Yankee Stadium and every American League park in between.

“Ever since I was young. I had to make sure that I was very loose when I got up to bat. I was trying to make sure the bat felt very light in my hands. When I was younger, I usually used two bats, because we didn’t have a donut. I would swing them around and it looks like I’m hyper, but I’m just getting loose.”

That’s when he hears it.

“Usually on the road they’ll have comments, like, ‘Settle down. Relax.’” Eckstein says, chuckling at the though. “One guy said, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance.’”

Eckstein has not been given a chance so much as he demanded it. And after working so hard to get an opportunity, there was no way he was going to let it slip away.

After playing at the University of Florida, Eckstein was drafted in the 19th round by the Boston Red Sox in 1997. But after three and a half seasons in the Boston organization, the Red Sox put Eckstein on waivers.

Eckstein was undeterred.

He’d known rejection before. Eckstein earned all-state honors at Seminole High School, but not a single college would offer him a scholarship.

So he walked on at Florida and ended up an All-America second baseman.

If there’s such a thing as the equivalent of a walk-on in major league baseball, Eckstein is it.

The Angels claimed him on Aug. 16, 2000, and a year later he hustled his way onto the Angels opening day roster.

Eckstein wasn’t even supposed to make the roster. But when second baseman Adam Kennedy broke a finger early in spring training, Eckstein got his shot.

After a strong spring training, Eckstein opened the season at second base. But when Kennedy returned after missing the first nine games of the season, the Angels had a decision to make. Eckstein forced them to find a way to keep him around. He ended up at shortstop, even though he’d only played the position briefly in the minors.

“We weren’t thinking of him as a shortstop,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia says. “He doesn’t have the arm strength or the range of a lot of shortstops, but he gets the job done.”

Though shortstop was a new position to Eckstein, he became the Angels everyday starter at the position through sheer hard work. He played 126 games at shortstop last season, the most by an Angel rookie since Gary DiSarcina in 1992.

He hit .285 with 29 stolen bases. Hard work and hustle are the key ingredients in Eckstein’s success.

“Everybody thinks I’m a hyper kid,” he says. “But if you get me off the field, I am so calm and so disciplined, you wouldn’t even know it’s the same person on the field.”

That’s because when he leaves the field, he leaves everything he has on it.

Eckstein isn’t trying to impress anyone with all the extra hustle. He’s just trying to keep his job.

“If I lay back and don’t give it all, I won’t be up here. I can tell you that. I have to play as hard as I can on every single pitch for me to be successful at this level. I can’t afford to take a day off.”

That’s what makes Eckstein the typical Angel. After a 6-14 start – the worst in club history – the Angels began approaching every game as if it was their first in the big leagues. Or their last. That spirit has won them hearts in Southern California and made Edison International Field of Anaheim the summer place to be in Orange County.

“It’s been awesome to play there,” Eckstein says. “The fans there are great. Late in the season they were especially great. They’re really into the games and, as a player, you love that. It’s just a great place to play.”

The Eckstein you see on the field bears little resemblance to the one you see away from the stadium. Providing, of course, you can find him. Eckstein isn’t one to hit the town on the road.

“After games on the road, I go straight back to my room. I just stay in. I am a totally different person when I leave the field.”

When you give leave it all at the park, there’s nothing left when you get home.

“Right now,” Eckstein says, “baseball is everything to me. This is my job and I enjoy winning and doing whatever it takes to help the team win the game. That’s my main focus. I’ve got to be ready to play the next day, so I save up all of my energy to just go out and play the game.”

If you do happen to bump into Eckstein away from the ballpark, chances are it would be at Sunday mass, which he attends regularly.

Otherwise, you’ll find him at the ballpark, giving everything he’s got to the Angels.

If he gives anything less, Eckstein knows he’ll hear about it in those postgame calls to his father. Not that Eckstein really needs any prompting from his father to remind him to go all out, all the time.

Kenny, Christine, and Susan Eckstein have already taken care of that.