Biggio: Target for Pitchers, Record Books
The blog Plunk Biggio records each beam as the veteran Astro nears record.
June 18, 2007 — -- No one in the majors knows quite as much about two-seam baseball bruises as Craig Biggio.
Since his 1988 debut with the Houston Astros, the all-star utility man has become familiar with "taking one for the team," having been hit by 283 pitches -- a mark just four short of the all-time hit-by-pitch record currently held by Hall of Famer Hughie Jennings.
His incidental record chasing has developed an Internet following in the form of the blog Plunk Biggio, which is "dedicated to Craig Biggio and his (probably unintentional) quest to break the all-time Major League career record for getting hit by pitches."
New Hampshire resident Michael Warren started the blog in April 2005, and has been daily updating Biggio's painful progress since then.
"I was wondering why there wasn't somebody writing about this," Warren told ABC News in an interview. "What interests me about this record is that it's not something he's trying to do. It has that kind of purity to it."
Warren deals with the difficulty of writing about the same thing day after day by expanding the blog to all things plunk-related, a pool where viewers can guess the day the record will be broken and, of course, other bizarre baseball statistics.
According to the blog, Biggio has only been hit by a pitch on Friday the 13th once, and it was by a pitcher whose first name was Jason. Also, Biggio has been hit four times on the release weekends of the Harry Potter books.
In a slightly more relevant statistic, Biggio is also on the cusp of another career landmark. He's 11 hits away from the 3,000 hit mark, a record Warren is much less excited about.
"I guess the 3,000 hits seems to be more important to him, but I'd have to say nobody's ever gotten past the plunk mark," said Warren, alluding to the 26 other players who have reached the 3,000 hit mark.
Warren, whose baseball team allegiance is to the Boston Red Sox, said he's become a genuine fan of Biggio since his blog's debut.
"He's never been injured. He's always played the next day and he's never charged the mound," Warren said, admirably. "He's one of those obscure guys. You don't really hear that much about him, but he's going to be a Hall of Famer."
