He's a hard-throwing right-hander with great control. He's got a rubber arm and is in the lineup practically every day. He's a local kid, not even 30 yet, but still a 17-year veteran. Rookies copy his style and dream of achieving what he has.

And he can claim a Fenway feat that no one else can. It sure doesn't sound like anyone on this year's struggling squad, and it isn't. We're talking about Rob Barry, the peanut vendor with the golden arm.

He'd much rather throw a bag than hand it off, and 19 times out of 20 he does -- more than 250 times a game. He hardly ever misses, whether he's standing next to you or throwing from 25 rows away. A handful of times a year, he even tosses up to the skyboxes. And the fans love it, especially youngsters.

"It's kind of like being a showman," Barry says. "You know, get their attention and, suddenly, the little kid that hates peanuts is ordering one. I hear it at least 25 times a game, `My kid doesn't even like peanuts, he just wanted to catch them.' "

In a nutshell, that's why Barry keeps coming back, night after night, day after night, a decade after most of his contemporaries moved on with their lives. He's got a "real" job, as a program officer at a correctional facility near the stadium, but he gets his fulfillment at Fenway, performing for thousands of folks dozens of times a year, making decent cash and little kids happy.

"You could be having a horrible day, but if you throw one up in the air and a little kid makes the catch, just the smile on his face is good enough for me," Barry says, and it's not just a platitude. Barry races through the park at a breakneck pace, but when 9-year-old Alex Teague drops her first toss on a recent Friday night, he gives her two more tries until she makes the grab, earning a thumbs-up from Barry and applause from the surrounding fans.

And it's not only the youngsters who are charmed. Bonnie Davey, 55, of Needham is another of Barry's almost 400 sales that night. She says she's been watching him all night, "and he's been right on target with everyone. I think he's terrific. He has a lot of confidence, and I've noticed people greeting him that seem to know him. I think he adds a lot to the park."

The thing is, Barry breaks the rules every time he tosses.

"They're not supposed to be throwing the product," says Jack Lyons, on-site manager for Aramark, the park's concessionaire, who is a 27-year Fenway veteran himself. "And Mr. Barry has had a history of that, and so have others. God forbid if anyone gets hurt." Barry's been reprimanded more than once, Lyons says, adding that Barry gets more favorable comments than complaints.

Though Barry's good to little kids, he's no choirboy. He says that over the years, he's been suspended perhaps a dozen times, "though not for anything crazy." He was even fired once, over an incident that made news nationwide.

It was the third inning of Game 3 of the 1986 World Series. He and a pal, David Buckley, were supposed to be selling hot dogs, but they were dogging it. It was the World Series, after all, and they wanted to watch.

"So we're sitting on our bins up there. This guy comes up to me and says, `Can I have a hot dog?' I go, `All out, sorry guy. Watch the game.' " But the guy came back a half inning later, and again an inning after that, getting the same answer each time.

It turned out the fellow was a reporter for USA Today. "The following day, it's in the sports section that Fenway ran out of hot dogs. Then `Good Morning America' picks it up!' " Worse: Barry's boss found out the real story and Barry was almost dismissed permanently. He appealed through the vendors' union and won, but not until the sixth game of the '87 season.

Maybe one reason he prevailed is that he's always been very good at hawking Fenway food. Joe Smith, who at No. 3 is one ahead of Barry in seniority among Fenway's 250 vendors, recalls a time, way back, when Barry was selling dogs: "He was at a thousand bucks {in sales} in, like, seven games! Everyone was just amazed. He used to come out of here -- they would give you 30 {hot dogs per load} -- but he used to go around the corner, go back in, get 30 more. He'd have 60, be stuffing them in, and he'd run out to left field and sell them.

"He's probably the best one here," Smith says.

It's not hard to see why. Not only is he flashy, he's tireless. On game days, after working 10-6 at his day job, he heads straight for the park. He's hustling by 6:30, booming out "Peanuts! Grab your nuts!" -- tossing as many as eight bags before going to collect, often walking row by row on the backs of chairs.

On the Friday night he worked both ends of the doubleheader, a pedometer in the nightcap showed he traveled more than 4 miles, about half of it going up stairs. "I definitely drop about 10 pounds each summer, I'll tell you that much. It's my paid aerobics class."

Working long and hard at Fenway Park runs in the Barry family. His sister Diana has 20 years in and sister Betsy has 18; both sell beer. But the three of them would have to add all their years together to outdo their dad, who started as a vendor in the '40s and left as a supervisor of vendors 45 years later. (Known around Fenway as "the Bull," Robert Barry Sr. died a week ago.)

Still, there is at least one feat Rob Barry can claim as his own. It's known as The Toss.

In the sixth inning on a sunny Saturday in 1995, Barry sent his friend Buckley, a former vendor, over to the third base side, where the screen behind home plate ends. He headed for the same spot on the other side, one bag left in his quiver. He walked down the aisle saying "Who needs nuts," but in a singsong voice, not with his usual boom.

"Everybody is looking at me, like, what's up with this kid? Has he got a problem, or what? I put down my bag, and {Buckley's} over on the other side: `I'll take some nuts,' just going crazy. I go, `You, sir, would you like some nuts?' And he's going `YEAHH!' Everybody around me is looking at me, going `no way.'

"I just hucked 'em as hard as I could." Barry, who's told the tale a thousand times, remembers the throw was perfectly on target. Buckley says the throw was good but not perfect. He had to lean over the field, trying to keep a toehold at the base of the low wall there. But then, legends do evolve over time.

Joe Smith says he hears the story at least once a year: "Every year he comes back in April, Opening Day, and he's telling us the story about how he threw it from one end of the field to the other end of the field. . . . Every year, it gets wider and wider. Every year. Every year, he just rubs it in," Smith says, adding that vendors like hearing it anyway, that it's a rite of spring.

There's even more to the tale of The Toss. There is The Photo. A friend with Buckley had a camera and shot a picture that might be as astounding as The Toss itself.

"You know, I'm picturing {a photo of} the back of my friend's head. {But} the bag's in the air, you can see it against the roof box!" Barry says. Like the story, the picture gets around. A signed, framed copy graces the Baseball Tavern, about a block from the park, and Barry says he has given more than a dozen others as gifts.

It's "one of those things that I can say, `I took a shot, and it went through.' I can say I had a one-time-only thing at Fenway that nobody else has done. There aren't too many people who can say that."

With such a feather in his vendor's cap, what keeps Barry coming back, 17 years removed from his rookie year? Well, there is the money, not as good as it used to be but still about $90 a game, he says. And then there are the crowds, without whom he couldn't be the standout of the stands.

And there's one more thing: "I'm going for Yaz's record," he says, "23 years."

Yaz, Carl Yastrzemski, of course, made it into the Hall of Fame. If only there were a vendors' wing at Cooperstown.