Todd Helton, Mr. Rockie, became Cooperstown’s baddest dude

Before the thunder, Todd Helton ate lightning. Five fingers at a time.

“He would jab his finger into my gut, hard,” longtime Rockies trainer and Helton confidant Keith Dugger recalled with a laugh Tuesday, just before the Colorado icon saw his overdue ticket punched to baseball’s Hall of Fame. “And I would slap him on the side of the face.”

Like many great hitters, Mr. Rockie was a notorious creature of habit — “If he ate at Arby’s the day of a good (game), I promise you, he was going to eat Arby’s the next day, and the next 15 days,” Dugger chuckled — and a slave to superstition.

Dugger was Mighty Mick to Helton’s Rocky Balboa, right down to the bruises. And most of them came, funny enough, in the summer of 2000, at the apex of a Hall of Fame career, when the Rockies’ first baseman was chasing .400. That’s when Dugger — “Doogie” to his pals — and Helton got into a pregame routine that became one-third Italian Stallion and two-thirds Three Stooges.

Dugger would tape Helton’s left wrist. Helton would poke him hard in the belly. Doogie would slap the crap out of Helton’s left cheek.

Right wrist. Another poke. Another slap. This time on the right cheek.

Here’s the thing: No. 17 kept raking. And raking. And raking. So Helton kept on poking. And poking. And poking. Dugger kept slapping. And slapping. And slapping.

“After about three weeks, my wife is like, ‘What’s wrong with you? You’ve got some kind of disease, these blue dots all over you.’” the trainer recalled.

“And I looked around and I have these little dots, bruises from Todd jabbing me in my back and my gut.

“This was kind of like, ‘Let’s (help) you get motivated for the game before he goes out there.’ But once he started getting welts under the right eye, I’m thinking, ‘We have to break this superstition.’”