Hanover -- In the merger of Tobin Whitman and amateur baseball, there are no two ways about it. There are actually three ways about it.

By day, Whitman, 26, is a mild-mannered regional representative for Smith Barney in New York City.

By week's end, the Lyme Center native and 2000 graduate of Hanover High pitches and plays the outfield for not one, not two, but three different baseball teams: the College Point Clippers of the New York City Metro Baseball League (NYCMBL), the New York/New Jersey White Sox of the National Adult Baseball Association (NABA) and the Kings County Royals of the Pedrin Zorrilla League.

Now that's free agency.

“You work five days a week, just to have that one good day of baseball,” Whitman said last week during a visit home for the Thanksgiving holiday.

This triple play started innocuously enough two years ago, after Whitman graduated from Gettysburg (Pa.) College with a health and exercise sciences degree and relocated to the Big Apple. At Gettysburg, Whitman was a second-team all-conference right-handed pitcher as a junior, and a Bullet teammate also living in New York, Chris Ferris, wondered if Whitman wanted to pick up where he left off.

Whitman joined Ferris on the Clippers in 2007. Playing 33 games scattered among weekend doubleheaders and a sporadic midweek contest, Whitman pointedly remembers his Cy Young-winning stat line: 9-1, 0.60 ERA, 132 strikeouts in 89 innings (no joke; Whitman won the NYCMBL Brooklyn/Queens division Cy Young award).

While he cleaned up in the NYCMBL, Whitman, who pitched and played the outfield for four years at Hanover, wasn't in love with the casual approach of some of his Clipper mates.

“It's fun, no doubt,” he said. “But you look at a guy and you think, ‘You shouldn't be competing.' It’s tough to stay in it all the time -- a lot of goofing around.”

For a level above, Whitman turned to the White Sox, a Clippers opponent in a NABA tournament in 2007. Both teams were in the open division in this event because the White Sox had brought only nine players.

After Whitman tied them in knots, White Sox manager Sal Nicosia asked if he wanted to accompany the team to the 2007 NABA World Series Tournament in Phoenix. The White Sox finished second, and Whitman went 6-for-16 at the plate while picking up a victory on the mound.

This year, Whitman traveled with the Sox all along their tournament itinerary: West Palm Beach, Fla.; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Prince William, Va.; and Phoenix again for the World Series. Most stops are weekend events surrounding a national holiday, like Martin Luther King Day or Memorial Day, and the games are staged in training-camp parks for Major League Baseball teams.

“Our tournament team is unbelievable,” Whitman said. “We have a former Mariners catcher, Rich Aleman, who's just a monster at the plate. It's very good competition.”

While playing against the White Sox set up Whitman's second team affiliation, playing with them offered a third. Last spring, a White Sox teammate introduced Whitman to the Royals of the Zorrilla League, a predominantly Dominican league based in Brooklyn.

Whitman claims he's one of maybe two or three Caucasian players in the “Z-League,” but that's the fun of it. For one game per weekend in the summer months, Whitman immerses himself in the passion of Latin baseball.

If the Royals' game starts at 11 a.m., Whitman will likely still be at the park at 7 p.m., swaying to salsa, accosted by kids and plied by the adult fans with food and beer. He in turn gives away wristbands, T-shirts, batting gloves, to the everlasting glee of his wee disciples.

When Whitman first started pitching in the Z-League this spring, opposing clubs and fans would call him “Gringo.” As he flourished, he became better known as “Toby.” A few gems later, he was “Mr. Whitman.”

During last month's season-ending tournament in the Dominican Republic, Whitman played against major-league luminaries such as Vladimir and Wilton Guerrero, Fausto Carmona and Otis Nixon.

“We were facing guys throwing 93-94 miles per hour that are playing in Dominican winter ball,” Whitman said. “It's the best baseball I've played. It’s unbelievable for summer baseball.”

Whitman speaks very little Spanish, but his teammates tend to be fluent in both Spanish and English. The umpires, however, are primarily Spanish-speaking natives of the Dominican Republic. That makes it difficult for Whitman to plead for more of the plate when he's on the mound.

“I never really showed a lot of emotion, whether I'm losing 15-0 or it's 0-0,” Whitman said. “But sometimes in the Zorrilla League, it's difficult to try to keep composure. You make a pitch you think is a strike … and you ask the catcher, who’ll ask (the umpire) for me, and then they'll get upset at you. You’re like, I’m not trying to push your buttons here, but that was a strike.”

Heaping his (home) plate with extra helpings isn't new to Whitman. He was a prolific skier and ski-jumper for Hanover High and Ford Sayre Academy while directing his energies to baseball in the spring.

Whitman delayed college enrollment for two years to ski-jump at Lake Placid, N.Y., and Park City, Utah; he even supplied the behind-the-scenes background for NBC's coverage of ski jumping at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

It's difficult to stay trim enough to ski-jump forever; Whitman could fly a lot further at 140 pounds than at his current 170.

But baseball accommodates all shapes and sizes, and Whitman has no intention of curbing his profligate ways. The Clippers folded in the offseason, but should be resurrected under new management for 2009, so Whitman plans to play for all three teams again.

Besides, since patrolling more outfield than pitching for the Clippers/White Sox/Royals, Whitman has discovered newfound power to the opposite field and a livelier arm than he had at Gettysburg.

“It's weird. My arm is better now than it was in high school or college,” he said. “I'm throwing harder. I've got more pitches and better pitches, and I don’t know why.”

And with a very understanding girlfriend living on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, why not play two -- or three, or four.

“It sounds like more than it is,” Whitman explained. “It's mostly during the weekends. I'm in the gym during the week, but that’s just to stay in shape. It’s not too bad. We're still together all the time.”

Tony Lane can be reached at alane@vnews.com or (603) 727-3227.