CARLSBAD —— In the crucible of postseason baseball, in the most pressure-packed moment of his athletic life, Dave Roberts was thinking about a 72-year-old part-time instructor for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Considering his situation on that cold October night, of course, it didn't hurt that the coach also happened to be one of the best base stealers in baseball history.

Today, Roberts is the local boy come home, a former multisport star at Rancho Buena Vista High who will debut this season as the Padres' center fielder and leadoff hitter. But last fall he was a cold-off-the-bench pinch runner for a deflated Boston Red Sox team in dire need of a spark —— and a stolen base.

Standing on first base, Roberts allowed his mind to drift from the 4-3 deficit the Red Sox faced in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, and the never-overcome 3-0 edge the detested New York Yankees held in the series, and the most dominant playoff closer the sport has ever known on the mound (New York's Mariano Rivera). Instead, he thought of Maury Wills, the old Dodgers great who had been his mentor since they met almost three years earlier.

In a case of eerie prescience, Wills had told Roberts that he would get a chance to alter the course of what was, up to that point, a mostly ordinary career, and that he couldn't let it pass by. Heeding opportunity's knock, Roberts measured Rivera and then tore off down the basepath, beating Jorge Posada's throw by an eyelash. After Roberts scored the tying run on a Bill Mueller single up the middle (Boston won the game in 12 innings), the Red Sox were off and sprinting on an epic charge that culminated in their first World Series title in 86 years.

"So many people are defined by one moment in their career in baseball," said Roberts, who hadn't left the dugout for 10 days before the dramatic pinch-running appearance. "And sometimes, unfortunately, it's a bad moment in the case of a Billy Buckner, and sometimes it's a great thing. If people in Boston are going to remember me forever for that stolen base, that's a positive. I'll never get tired of hearing of that."

Becoming a folk hero —— the anti-Buckner, if you will —— on a club for the ages would represent the pinnacle for many players. But Roberts received a greater blessing. He got the trade he never imagined possible. He got a return ticket to his roots.

"We feel like we won the lottery," Tricia Roberts said of her husband living at home in Carlsbad and playing for the Padres. "It sounds cliched, but it's a dream come true."

Now Roberts wants more than one frozen moment. He wants an entire season of magic.

"Knowing I'm a part of history is something that's going to be with me forever," he said. "But I'm definitely looking forward to doing something special with the Padres. I'm looking forward to winning here."

The so-called Padres Caravan is ready to pick up and move on to its next stop on a promotional tour of the community, but something is holding it back. Dave Roberts can't pull himself away. Kids and adults alike at the Doubletree Golf Resort in Rancho Bernardo on a recent afternoon keep asking him for autographs (he politely accommodates every request). Well-wishers keep wishing him well. He receives more attention than higher-profile teammates Phil Nevin and Brian Giles, who join him at the Kiwanis Club event.

"For me to come home, a lot of people have thanked me, so they don't have to be Dodger fans or Indian fans or Red Sox fans anymore," said Roberts, 32.

"They can just continue to root for the team they've always rooted for."

Roberts is the one who is being pulled in all directions during the publicity blitz leading up to the start of spring training this month, but he might as well be the person doing the thanking. After spending much of his eight-year slog through the minor leagues on the East Coast and most of the past three seasons in L.A. with the Dodgers, he wakes up every morning in his own bed and spends cherished time with his 4 1/2-month-old daughter, Emerson, who was born in Boston. He drives his 4-year-old son, Cole, to preschool and, a few times a week, makes the quick jaunt south to Petco Park for pre-spring workouts.

Perhaps his greatest thanks, though, should be reserved for the Padres. The team paid a hefty price to acquire him from the Red Sox on Dec. 20, sending Boston three players —— center fielder Jay Payton, infielder Ramon Vazquez and pitching prospect David Pauley —— along with $2.65 million in cash. No sooner had the swap been announced than the Padres installed him as the guy to patrol the notorious no-man's land that is center field at Petco and as their offensive table-setter. That's quite a responsibility for a player who has never been an everyday outfielder in the majors or posted a full-season on-base percentage of higher than .353.

Yet the Padres were attracted by the same quality that made Roberts a natural choice to attempt The Steal in the ALCS: his speed. He swiped 38 bases with L.A. and Boston last season following consecutive years of at least 40, which placed him in Dodgers' history alongside such burners as Wills and Padres coach Davey Lopes. The Padres as a team only managed 52 steals in 2004, a total that ranked 27th in baseball. Third baseman Sean Burroughs, the primary leadoff man, had just five.

On the day the trade was announced, general manager Kevin Towers predicted that Roberts would reach 60 stolen bases this season.

"I think, with our park, he's perfect for us, to have speed at the top of the order and in the outfield because of the huge gaps," Padres manager Bruce Bochy said. "He's only going to make us a better club because we're not a team that can sit back and rely on power anymore. To have a guy at the top of the order who can put pressure on the other team and maybe score a run without a base hit, that's going to be important for us."

Roberts is making sure his legs are up to the challenge, leading teammates through "butt-kicking" conditioning drills under new speed instructor Rahn Sheffield, who coaches track and field at San Diego State.

"I don't have a number in mind, but 50 or 60 (steals) sounds about right," said Roberts, who is guaranteed $1.35 million this year. "The thing is, I take pride in stealing bases when everyone in the ballpark knows I'm going —— important stolen bases. I just want to win baseball games."

Roberts owns a videotape of that fateful Game 4. It hasn't come off the shelf much in the past few months, what with the infant daughter and the cross-country move and the rigorous training. When he does watch his 90-foot dash into baseball lore, however, he's always struck by the same thing.

"I can't believe how close the play (at second base) was," he said. "I was this close to ending the series."

That's nothing. On his long road leading up to The Steal, Roberts was this close to giving up baseball —— twice.

Born in Okinawa, Japan, to a black father on military duty and a Japanese mother, Roberts lived overseas for only a few months before the family —— which also includes younger sister, Melissa, 31 —— came to the United States. With his father, Waymon, in the Marines, the Roberts family bounced around the country during Dave's childhood, then settled in Oceanside when he was 12.

He attended Vista High as a freshman but transferred to RBV when it opened the following year. There, football was king, and by his sophomore year Roberts was already a quicksilver option quarterback who would begin receiving recruiting letters from such college powerhouses as Washington, Oklahoma and Nebraska. Baseball and basketball were merely activities to pass the seasons.

Everything changed on a spring day in 1988. The Longhorns, without a football field of their own, were practicing at Palomar College. Roberts kept the ball on an option play and, as was his habit, continued running long after it had been whistled dead. Far down the field, with no defenders around him, his right knee buckled.

After having the knee scoped, he rushed his rehabilitation to try to return for his junior season. Bad move. Wearing a large brace during summer practice, he again tore his anterior cruciate ligament without being touched. This time, reconstructive surgery was required, shelving him for the entire school year.

"Without the injury, I would have played football somewhere," said Roberts, who did turn down an appointment to continue his gridiron career at the Air Force Academy. "Football was what I was going to do."

So he hung up his helmet and pads, but not before going out with a bang. As a senior, he directed a punishing offense that featured a pair of 2,000-yard rushers (Markeith Ross and O.J. Hall) while guiding RBV to a CIF title, capped by a 21-7 victory over Morse. It hardly mattered to Roberts that his scrambling ability was shackled by his coach over concerns about his knee.

"He was the absolute best guy in the locker room, a quintessential team guy," said Craig Bell, the Longhorns' coach at the time. "If I was going to take a high school kid to start a football team, I'd pick him."

Fortunately for Roberts, he was pretty good at baseball, too (he hit .382 as a senior), and accepted a scholarship to UCLA. Unfortunately, a stellar four-year college career in which he batted .325 and set a school record for stolen bases (109) didn't translate into professional desirability. The Detroit Tigers selected him in the 28th round of the 1994 draft and offered a $1,000 signing bonus.

Roberts would suffer many indignities en route from Jamestown, N.Y. (his first minor-league assignment) to his big-league breakthrough in L.A. The greatest of them came in 1996, when he was rewarded for an All-Star season at Single-A Lakeland (Fla.) with a ticket to Visalia, a co-op team in the California League.

Feeling defeated, Roberts called Tricia, then his girlfriend of almost 10 years, and told her he would drop baseball right then and there if she said the word. Her response: "You're going to regret it if you stop playing now."

"So basically his whole career is because of me," Tricia Roberts joked.

Said Dave: "My wife and I have our faith. I think the Lord above wanted me to be a baseball player."

The folk hero won't be at Fenway Park in April to receive his World Series ring with the rest of the 2004 Red Sox. Roberts thinks it will be delivered instead. He looks back on that three-month whirlwind in Boston after coming over in a July 31 trade with the Dodgers as almost an out-of-body experience, as though it happened to someone else.

Much the same description could apply to his feeling on the day he landed with the Padres, when his parents came over from Oceanside and Tricia's family came over and the whole group screamed and spilled champagne. Or his feeling on a lazy afternoon last week, when he lounged on the living-room floor with his baby girl and playfully squeezed into his son's catcher's mask.

"You should see him hit," Roberts bragged, beaming with fatherly pride.

Last October, Roberts stole second base. This year, he's stealing home.

Contact staff writer Brian Hiro at b_hiro@hotmail.com.