The Fabulous New Life Of Cole Hamels

"We used to drive to the field together in spring training, and I'd be like, 'O.K., Cole, I'm going to do a mock interview with you,'" said Heidi. "I said, 'If you're wanting to be their ace, act like you're their ace. Talk like their ace.'"

"This was in the spring of '06," Cole said, "when I started getting a lot more attention, and they thought I might make the team halfway through the year."

"You went from saying 'um' 20 times in an interview to maybe once," she said.

Cole smiled at the memory. "Just cutting down on certain words and not trying to escape [helped]," he said. "Heidi was like, If you want to be in a position to represent the team, you've got to dress the part, you've got to speak the part. That was something I didn't know. I could be too SoCal, laid-back." Cole's wardrobe used to be stocked with cargo shorts and surfer T-shirts. Now he's a Hugo Boss kind of a guy.

This winter Cole has been offered plenty of opportunities to display his Heidi-honed public persona. There was the Letterman show, for which he was flown to New York City in a helicopter to recite the Top 10 Things That Went Through Cole Hamels's Mind after Winning the World Series. (Number 5, delivered with an arched left eyebrow: Is the Phillie Phanatic hitting on my wife?) "What a guy, huh?" Dave said afterward.

There was The Ellen DeGeneres Show, on which Hamels charmed the host and threw a ball that plunged her producer into a dunk tank for charity. Then there was the endless series of lower-profile events—meet-and-greets, autograph shows, commercial shoots, magazine photo shoots, charity appearances—that suddenly dominated his calendar. On the weekend of the print signing at the Diamond Club, he had already been the subject of a shoot for Philadelphia Style magazine, attended a baseball card show in New Jersey and dined with high rollers at two Atlantic City casinos. Oh, yes: He had also signed a three-year, $20.5 million contract with the Phillies, the largest ever awarded to a pitcher who was eligible for arbitration for the first time.

In many ways Hamels represents a marketing executive's fantasy. He is, of course, outrageously talented—a southpaw who throws a 94-mph fastball, an above-average curve and a changeup that Tom House, the big league pitcher turned pitching guru who began tutoring Hamels when he was a junior in high school, calls "in the top 10 I've ever seen." What sets Hamels apart, says House, is that he throws all three pitches from the same release point. "It's devastating for a hitter when all of them look like a fastball, and two of them aren't." In October, when he went 4--0 with a 1.80 ERA in five playoff starts, Hamels firmly established himself as the third-best lefthanded starter in the game, behind only Johan Santana and CC Sabathia. He could easily have become the first pitcher to win five games in a single postseason if horrendous weather and a swollen middle finger he sustained while trying to bunt had not forced him to cut down on his changeups in Game 5 of the World Series, and if the rain had not caused that game's suspension with the score tied 2--2 in the sixth inning.

As if that weren't enough, Hamels is good-looking—long ago teammates gave him the nickname Hollywood Hamels—and charming in that chilled-out, beach-rat way. Despite his upgraded wardrobe, it's not hard to imagine him driving around San Diego in his broken-down Chevy lowrider with his best buddies, Scott Lonergan and Matt Reid, as he did as a teenager not so long ago. "Cole and I were probably the most killer two-on-two beach volleyball combo ever to hit Del Mar," says Lonergan, who last year pitched in the Red Sox organization. "We'd fuel up with burritos from Roberto's Taco Shop, and then we'd go out and just dominate."

Hamels is also humble and quick to laugh at himself. He casts himself as the rube in many of the personal stories he tells. There was the time that shortstop Jimmy Rollins and a few other teammates invited him to play cards on the team plane. ("I was like, Sure, I know how to play poker, but it wasn't poker, and the next thing I know, all my meal money's gone.") And the misunderstanding over the 2010 Chevy Camaro he won as the World Series MVP and promised in a postgame interview to give to Heidi. ("I kept waiting for them to deliver it, so I finally called and they said you have to order it online, and it'll take eight months. I was like, I thought I just got the one that was on the field!") And the awe with which he still remembers his Letterman appearance, because of the chopper ("I'd never been in one before!") and because actor Paul Rudd, a guest on that night's show, congratulated him backstage. ("I was like, You, Paul Rudd, watch baseball? And you know who I am?")

In addition to all that—and this is what would really thrill a marketing exec—Hamels has been willing to do nearly everything he's been invited to do in this, his first off-season as a true star. "It's been a whirlwind of opportunities that you never really imagine having," he said in Clearwater. "It's a way to show fans a different side of me. I didn't grow up with this glamorous lifestyle—my mom [Amanda] is a teacher, and my dad [Gary] works as an assistant school-district superintendent—but all kids can achieve their goals if they really want to, and that's what I want to show them.