Biggio gives new meaning to HBP

If you're keeping score at home, or the ballpark for that matter, it's "HBP" when a batter is hit by a pitched ball.

Craig Biggio, the Astros' 40-year-old second baseman, has been HBP more than anyone in the modern baseball era, and pretty soon will have been HBP more than anyone in any baseball era.

Maybe HBP really means "Hit Biggio Pitching" instead of Hit By Pitch.

He gets asked about it a lot. Yesterday, he was in Washington to play the Nationals, so the Washington Post sent a reporter to the lockerroom. You get the idea Biggio's been through this HBP Q&A routine many times before, maybe more than the 277 times he's been HBP, but he handles it with aplomb.

He's got a code worked out for his wife and kids to
let them know how bad his latest HBP was, he tells the Post's Peter Carlson.

"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.' "

But don't look for any deep meaning behind all the HBPs, even though the Washington reporter asked Biggio if they were a "metaphor for life." (This is happens when you send a Style reporter to do a sportswriter's job...You'll have to excuse The WaPo; the nation's capital, after a long drought, still is relatively new to Major League Baseball.)

Biggio declined to take one for the Washington Post, refusing to swing at the metaphor pitch, he did allow this much:

"It happens," he says. "It's always gonna happen. Some guys don't mind it. Some guys do. To me, it's part of the game."

[washington post]