C. Trent Rosecrans

crosecrans@enquirer.com

Billy Hamilton versus John Ross? The Reds’ speedster is up for it if the Bengals’ first-round pick is.

“It's something I look forward to. I'm a competitor, if something happens with him, it happens,” Hamilton said following Thursday’s 4-2 victory over the Pirates. “We'll do it for a charity event. I'm willing to do it.”

Ross set an NFL Combine record with a 4.22-second 40-yard dash in March. Hamilton sent Ross a tweet welcoming him to Cincinnati after the Bengals drafted him No. 9 overall last week. Since then, there’s been plenty of talk about who would win a side-by-side race.

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“I think we could do 40 and I think it'd be a good race for the city and for me and him to get our names out there,” Hamilton said, noting he hasn’t run a timed 40-yard dash since ninth grade when he put up a 4.5-second 40. “It's something we could look forward to looking into, our agents (could talk) and see how it goes.”

Reds reserve Patrick Kivlehan played college football at Rutgers and knows that as far as his experience goes, Hamilton can run with anyone. The former defensive back also knows he wouldn’t have a shot at covering Hamilton.

“I'd need some inside help,” Kivlehan said. “I’m probably the over-the-top help, someone else can guard him. I'll just sit back on the hash and try to pick one off.”

Hamilton is the fastest man in baseball and on Thursday became the fourth-fastest player in baseball history to get to 200 steals for his career, reaching it in 424 games with a fifth-inning steal against Pirates starter Ivan Nova and catcher Francisco Cervelli.

The 200th stolen base of his career broke a tie with Edd Roush for seventh place on the team’s all-time list. He now stands just 21 steals behind Vada Pinson for sixth. Joe Morgan’s 406 are the most in Reds history and well beyond that lies Rickey Henderson’s big-league record of 1,406.

Hamilton said he hadn’t been aware of the impending milestone until a couple of days ago when athletic trainer Tomas Vera wrote on his leg wrapping, “3 more to CC.” Hamilton said he gets his legs and knees wrapped before every game to help protect the pounding on his legs and Vera always writes something, be it a message or a quote.

The “3 more to CC” stumped Hamilton, who asked Vera what it meant. Vera simply told him he’d know when he got there. After two steals in Tuesday’s game, Verra told him there was only “one more to go.” That’s when Hamilton figured out he meant 200 career steals and only later putting together the Roman numeral for 200.

“It means a lot to be up there with the greatest people in stolen bases, but it's something you've got to keep moving forward and keep getting more, there's a long way to go to get the record. I saw the record the other day, it's over 1,000… It's a long way to go. It's something i've got to keep building off of and moving forward.”