Houston's Craig Biggio Plays the Game One Way—ALL OUT HUSTLE

Baseball Digest, Sept, 2001 by Fran Blinebury

THE LITTLE GUY WAS POISED THERE with his left leg raised, arms back, bat sticking almost straight up into the air. But you could tell it wasn't really Craig Biggio.

For one thing, the bronze sculpture was only 24 inches tall. For another, Biggio has never stood still for so long at any time in his life.

Biggio is performance art, not anything that you can put on a pedestal or inside a gilded frame.

The sculpture honored Biggio last May at Enron Field for becoming the first Astro to get 2,000 hits, but all he wanted to do was play ball.

"Yeah, it's nice," he said. "I think it's one of those things I'll appreciate more when it's all over.

"For me, the excitement isn't in the numbers or the statistics," Biggio said. "It's being able to come. out to the ball-park every day and call this my job.

"I've played in my career with guys like Nolan Ryan and Buddy Bell and Billy Doran and I'm playing now with great players like Jeff Bagwell and Moises Alou. That's a thrill."

No more so than watching him play, eye-black smeared on a still-boyish face, dirt from one more bellyflop dive up the middle smeared the front of his uniform.

He is there every day, or would be if they didn't force him to occasionally sit down for his own good, through all of those games and all of those hits.

So what else is there about him that nobody knows?

Catcher Brad Ausmus practically twisted his face into a sailor's knot pondering.

"He's pretty unremarkable in that regard," Ausmus said.

Remarkably unremarkable. He is, by the numbers and according to his peers and any other yardstick you use to measure, a star. Yet, there is so little of the aura, because that's the way he likes it.

He was an All-Star as a catcher, switched to second base and became an All-Star again. We take players like him for granted, because he's been doing so much for so long.

He is, as they say, an old-school player, which means that he has too much respect for the game to try to make himself stand out above it.

"I admired him from a distance when I was in New York," said general manger Gerry Hunsicker. "Always thought that he was a class act. Then I got here to Houston and found it, quite honestly, all to be true."

He is an open book upon whose pages are written very few complicated words.

"I'm a pretty simple guy," Biggio said.

Husband, father, devoted to the Sunshine Kids.

There isn't much about him that we don't know, because he brings it inside the lines every night and leaves all of it out there on the field. If it isn't going deep into the hole to snare a grounder, it's turning the double play. If it isn't getting all the way around on a fastball to take it over the wall, it's battling the opposing pitcher until he gets that single or draws the walk that sets up the rally.

The front of his jersey is always dirty and the knees of his pants are frequently torn. He plays that way because it's the only way he knows how to play. All out.

BIGGIO'S CAREER BATTING STATISTICS

Year      Team        AB       H    2B   3B    HR       R   RBI

1988      Astros     123      26     6    1     3      14     5
1989      Astros     443     114    21    2    13      64    60
1990      Astros     555     153    24    2     4      53    42
1991      Astros     546     161    23    4     4      79    46
1992      Astros     613     170    32    3     6      96    39
1993      Astros     610     175    41    5    21      98    64
1994      Astros     437     139    44    5     6      88    56
1995      Astros     553     167    30    2    22     123    77
1996      Astros     605     174    24    4    15     113    75
1997      Astros     619     191    37    8    22     146    81
1998      Astros     646     210    51    2    20     123    88
1999      Astros     639     188    56    0    16     123    73
2000      Astros     377     101    13    5     8      67    35
200t( )   Astros     302      93    17    1    13      55    37
Totals             7,068   2,062   419   44   173   1,242   778

Year        BA    SB

1988      .211     6
1989      .257    21
1990      .276    25
1991      .295    19
1992      .277    38
1993      .287    15
1994      .318    39
1995      .302    33
1996      .288    25
1997      .309    47
1998      .325    50
1999      .294    28
2000      .268    12
200t( )   .308     3
Totals    .292   361

( )2001 stats through games of July 1, 2001

What don't we know about him?

"That he goes to Mass every Sunday, even when we're on the road," said manager Larry Dierker. "I don't mean that to bring up the topic of religion, but to show his devotion to the task. We have a chapel before our Sunday games, but Bidge is a Catholic and he's got to find a Mass.

"What that means is he's up an hour or so earlier than everybody else, even when it's a day game after a night game and you know he could use the sleep. What it shows, I think, is that when he sets his mind to something, there is no halfway with him."

Which is why he's been able to accomplish so much. Which is how, at 35, he's been able to overcome the doubts and make such a swift recovery from last year's torn anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his left knee.