SANFORD, Fla. No drinking. No foul language. No pouting. No back talk. No slacking in the classroom. No smoking. No drugs. No disrespect.

And, Lord, no pop-ups.

"I hate pop-ups," murmured Whitey Eckstein, sitting in the spotless living room, in the house where the world championship shortstop grew up.

"Ask David. When he popped the ball up I'd go crazy. Pop-ups are worse than strikeouts. I mean, anybody can strike you out. When you pop it up, that means you've done something incorrect. Did you know Wade Boggs went a whole year with only three pop-ups?"

David Eckstein is the fifth of five children born in five consecutive years, a 5-foot-61/2 throbbing nerve of a baseball player who spends 162 games - and the mornings and the afternoons before them - with his knees bent and his glove poised.

He and the fourth child, Ricky, were named for Ricky and David Nelson. "From Ozzie and Harriet," their father said. "I wanted this to be the perfect household."

Whitey has the same thick blond hair, the same resolute stare of his youngest son. He has taught American history at Seminole High practically all his adult life, and his wife, Pat, has taught elementary school almost that long. The perfect household has produced five graduates of the U. of Florida - seven if you count the parents - without the scarcest help from modern child psychologists.

But David, even today, even as an Anaheim Angel whose games rarely end before 1:30 a.m. EDT, calls home every night.

He did the same thing throughout the minor leagues. He did it while he was at Florida.

He is the first to reach his position when the Angels take the field. He eats chicken and pasta at a precise time every day. He eats steak at night. He still drives his sister's old car.

He has made one baserunning mistake in all the years Whitey and Pat have watched him - got doubled off second, in the playoffs - and Whitey practically recoiled with shock.

"He's been the perfect son," Whitey said. "I can't think of one area in which he hasn't been."

As if he had a choice.

Life on an 'island'

In many ways, the Eckstein house is an island. Peer pressure, the inexorable force that drives high school kids to tattoos and cigarettes and bleached hair, could find no bridge to Ricky and David - nor to Kenny, Christine and Susan, the Ecksteins' first three children.

Those Angels who like the night life go there without David. "It's hard to say how he likes Southern California," Whitey said. "He goes to the ballpark and he goes home. When they're on the road, he stays in his room. He doesn't do very much except prepare for the next game."

Possibly because there is nothing unfriendly or disingenuous about Eckstein's methods, he is one of the most popular Angels. He was one of the first to get an ice bath after they clinched the wild-card spot in September.

"His two best friends from high school are his two best friends today," Pat Eckstein said. "But even though he didn't run with the crowd, he was voted the Prom King."

The vices of the world have not crossed that bridge. The cruelty of the world has.

Kenny is a lawyer in Tampa, a former page at the U.S. Senate, who was involved in the Florida Supreme Court's investigation of Election Day, 2000. Christine and Susan have combined to bear five grandchildren for Whitey and Pat. Kenny, Christine and Pat all live on transplanted kidneys. Kenny, in fact, underwent dialysis for 20 hours a day at Florida, going to class the other four.

Ricky and David dodged the same disease. "It's a medical mystery," Pat said. "We found two of the donors on the same weekend. You get on the list and you don't know when you find someone."

Ask Whitey when he's coming to Anaheim to watch the world champs, and he shrugs, and so does Pat.

"He's going to have to go on dialysis, too," Pat explained. "He's going to need a kidney transplant, although they say it's not the same problem that the children had."

She shook her head. No pouting.

A strict leader

Ricky is the batting coach at the University of Georgia, where David works out during the winter. When David slumps, Ricky goes to see him. "He can fix his swing immediately," Whitey said. "He can do that for a lot of guys. It's a gift."

But one day Ricky came home with a D in chemistry. Whitey took out an old fraternity paddle and popped him.

Ricky was 17.

"Today? They'd put me in jail," Whitey said. "People ask me why the kids didn't rebel. I think it's because I get it (the punishment) out of the way immediately, and then I tell them how much I love them. I did that with Ricky that day. I asked him why he got a D, and he said he just didn't prepare, and then I told him, 'Nobody in this family gets a D.' But then I put my arms around him."

David got no D's. He was an honor roll student at Florida. Whitey had to stretch a bit to rebuke him.

"I was on the Jim Rome Show (on radio) and he asked me about a player and I said, 'He's got mad skills,''' David said. "I talked to my dad that night and he said, 'What are you talking about, mad skills? Don't talk like that.'''

But the lord of discipline is a regular cigarette smoker, despite pleas from the children. Whitey suffered a stroke in 1990 and temporarily lost all functions on his right side.

The contradictions mount. Whitey avoids schmoozing. He'd spend every night at home if he could. But he spends long hours on Sanford's planning commission and is currently the town's vice mayor.

Mostly, he squeezed the reins so tightly because he was terrified the kids would fall under a bad influence - himself.

"I didn't want them to be like me," he said grimly. "I used bad language, still do at times. I was tough on umpires when I played. I made excuses. I pouted. I don't feel like I reached my potential. I was going to make sure that they didn't make the mistakes I did."

Determined player

David's Seminole High team won the state championship. He got no scholarship offers. He went to Florida anyway and walked on. Except he didn't wait for the tryouts, which, Whitey said, consisted of "take a couple of ground balls, take a couple of swings, run down the first base line. David wouldn't have made it if that's all they saw."

David went to the preseason scrimmages, uninvited. He sat on a bench like a 6-year-old, waiting for the 10-year-olds to tell him he could play. He finally did play, and the coaches became familiar with him. A new coach, Andy Lopez, arrived and, like all coaches before or since, swooned over Eckstein's determination and instincts. Eckstein and Brad Wilkerson, now with the Expos, led the Gators to a College World Series.

"I don't want this to sound like I'm bragging," Whitey said. "But players have a tendency to feed off David. They always have. Maybe they know that if they don't run a ball out, if they don't play hard, that it's the only thing that gets David upset."

When Whitey asked David what he really felt, when Darin Erstad caught the final fly ball of the World Series, David said, "Relief."

After the season, Eckstein accompanied Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and other major league all-stars to Japan for an exhibition tour. The Ginza, the geishas and all the rest were lost on Eckstein. So was the sushi. He was there for the games.

He also wondered if he'd find a Catholic church. That's another assumption that doesn't work with the Ecksteins - they're not Jewish, even though some fans criticized David for playing baseball on Yom Kippur.

"He found a church, though," Pat said. "I don't care if it's Japan or where it is. Whitey Eckstein's son is going to Mass."

Looking to future

So the Ecksteins wait for checkups and examinations and hope they get lucky again.

Whitey did come to the American League Championship Series last year, and Pat came to the World Series, and David put them in the Balboa Bay Club. They winced at the noisemakers, and they squirmed at the crowds.

"Jeez, what a fiasco," Pat said.

"It was a great thing to go to," Whitey said, "but the main thing we did was stay out of David's way."

Mostly they marvel at their fifth child, a repudiation of modern parenting methods, an example of best-laid plans that, if anything, worked too well.

"I wonder what kind of girl is going to be his girlfriend," Pat Eckstein said.

Easier, though, to imagine David Eckstein's son.