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Similar story in the Washington Post this morningBattered Up!
He's Been Hit by Pitches 277 Times, but Houston Astro Craig Biggio Is Having a Ball

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 24, 2006; C01



Are you having a tough day at work? Do you feel as if life is pummeling your tender body with rock-hard projectiles hurled at high speeds? Take a deep breath and think: What would Craig Biggio do?

Here's what Craig Biggio would do: He would pick himself up, dust himself off and boogie on down the line. Or maybe hobble on down the line. But he would get down that damn line even if he had to crawl.

Craig Biggio is the king of pain. He has been beaned, plunked, dinged, smashed, whacked, zapped and clobbered, but he doesn't let it bother him. Last year, Biggio, who works as a second baseman for the Houston Astros, set the modern (post-1900) record for getting hit by the most pitches in a career: 268. This year, his total is up to 277 plunkings, which means he's zeroing in on Hughie "Ee-Yah" Jennings's all-time record, which is 287.

Sitting in the visitors' locker room at RFK Stadium on Monday, waiting to play the first of four games with the Washington Nationals, Biggio shrugged off these records with the calm of a Zen master.

"If it's meant to be, it's meant to be," he said. "And if it's not, it's not."

Biggio is a Stoic philosopher in a baseball cap. He knows life hurts, but he chooses to ignore that.

"It swells up and you move on," he says. "You give it enough time and it goes away."

Biggio lives by a code that seems old-fashioned in this Era of Shared Feelings: When some huge, hulking brute hits him with a hardball thrown at 95 mph, he just heads down to first base. He does not whimper, he does not curse, he does not yell or charge the mound with homicide blazing in his eyes. And he never, ever rubs the sore spot.

"Oh, no, I won't touch it," he says. "The pitcher knows he hit you and you know he hit you, and rubbing ain't gonna make it any better."

Now in his 19th season, Biggio, 40, has developed a method for communicating the level of his excruciation to his wife and three kids.

"I tell 'em, 'If you see me walk to first, it really hurts. If I jog to first, it's not that big a deal.' "

Biggio shows no visible signs of his 277 dings -- no scars, no black-and-blue marks. He's thin, with close-cropped hair and bright blue eyes. He has the unhurried ease of a man who is a master of his craft. A Long Island native who has spent his entire career with the Astros, he has been elected seven times to the National League All-Star team. He's a lifetime .285 hitter with 2,845 hits, 264 home runs, 623 doubles, 408 stolen bases and four gold gloves -- numbers that could put him in the Hall of Fame, even without his hit-by-pitches record.

And he shows no sign of slowing down. This year, he's hitting .300 and leading the National League with 19 doubles. Obviously, he's not a man who can't get on base without being smacked by a pitch. But he's willing to get on base any way he can, even if it's painful.

"I never really go up there trying to get hit," he says. "But for me, it is another avenue to get on base."

Biggio understands one of the great lessons of life: Sometimes you hit the ball and sometimes the ball hits you. He's very aggressive at the plate, but he's also willing to be passive-aggressive if that will do the trick.

"Guys throw inside," he says, "and sometimes you're not inclined to move."

Of course, baseball rules require a batter to try to avoid being hit. Last August, Dodgers pitcher Jeff Weaver hit Biggio, but umpire Doug Eddings ruled that Biggio hadn't tried to dodge the Dodger's pitch. Eddings called the pitch a ball and told Biggio to try again. Biggio flied out, then argued the call so vociferously that he was ejected from the game.

"When a [pitcher] throws a slider that starts behind you, it's tough to get out of the way," Biggio explains. "It was kind of frustrating."

Watching a couple of teammates play cribbage in the locker room, Biggio tells the story of his career as a human catcher's mitt. It all started, he says, because he likes to stand close to home plate and because in his early days he picked his front foot up as he swung, which made it hard to dodge pitches.

"It started to accumulate -- 20, 25, 30 times a year getting hit by pitches," he says, "and I was a lead-off guy, and it was my job to get on base."

Now, the only active player even close to Biggio is Oakland A's catcher Jason Kendall, who's been plunked 202 times.

Biggio's most painful plunk came in 1997, when a Jeremi Gonzalez fastball hit the earflap of his helmet -- and his cheekbone.

"The earflap absorbed enough of it that it didn't break anything," he says. "But it felt like somebody took a hammer and smashed my face."

That one laid him on the ground for a while, but he climbed off the dirt and walked to first base. He had no choice, he says: His team was in a pennant race. In fact, Biggio swears he's never missed a game because of a plunking.

"Once I got hit right here," he says, jabbing his finger at the point of his left elbow. "It hurt so bad . The next day somebody said, 'You want to wear a pad?' And I said, 'What are the odds of getting hit in the same spot?' And the next day, I got hit in the same spot. And I swear it hurt so bad I wanted to cry. I was like, 'Ah, I think I'll wear it now.' "

That was back in the early '90s, and for a few years, Biggio wore a huge pad that covered much of his left arm.

"The first one I had was so big and bulky, it was ridiculous," he says.

So why did he wear this ridiculous device?

"Because it didn't hurt," he says, laughing. "If you're gonna wear something, you might as well wear something where if you get hit, it's not gonna hurt, right?"

Who can argue with that logic?

Actually, lots of pitchers argued with that logic, saying, in essence: Hey, if you want to get a free base, you gotta be willing to take your lumps. And they won the argument: Baseball banned the use of those huge arm pads.

Today, Biggio wears a small black pad on his elbow. It's a new one. Last year, when he set the modern hit-by-pitches record, the Hall of Fame called to ask for his elbow pad. He gave it up eagerly.

Biggio's never-say-die style of play has earned him many fans. One of them is Jim Bowden, general manager of the Nationals. "He's a gutsy player," Bowden says. "He thinks of the team first and himself second."

Another is Amy Primeaux, 35, office manager of a Washington law firm, who attended Monday night's game wearing a Biggio uniform shirt. "I admire his willingness to take a little pain to help his team," she says.

But Biggio's most zealous, most creative and possibly looniest fan is a New Hampshire computer programmer named Michael Bourn. In April 2005, Bourn set up a Web site -- http://Plunkbiggio.blogspot.com -- to chronicle Biggio's race for the hit-by-pitch records................................
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