updated 7:59 p.m. ET June 24, 2005

HOUSTON - Craig Biggio hobbled into the Houston Astros’ clubhouse following a recent win, with bags of ice wrapped around his lower back, right shoulder and left knee.

Biggio will soon enter the record books because of career filled with afternoons like these, a game where he was twice hit by pitches. He’s perilously close to redefining what it means to take one, or maybe even two, for the team.

“It’s a painful way to make a living,” Biggio said, smiling through the aches.

Heading into Friday night’s game, Biggio had been plunked 266 times in his career, putting him one away from tying Don Baylor’s modern-era mark of 267. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Biggio will need to be plunked 21 more times to tie the all-time record held by Hall of Famer Hughie Jennings, who was hit 287 times in a 17-year career that started in 1891.

Virtually a 185-pound bull’s-eye, Biggio has been whacked in the face just once, drilled in the head four times and been pelted from shoulders to shins on 261 other occasions.

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Not so surprisingly, the 39-year-old Biggio is fuzzy about the guys who bounced pitches off his head and only recently started tallying how many hits he was away from Baylor’s mark.

“I don’t ever go up to the plate with the intention of getting hit,” Biggio said. “I go up there trying to get a hit.”

When Biggio started playing with Houston in 1988, he was a catcher and got used to getting “tattooed” by players at the plate so he wasn’t intimidated by being hit by pitches.

Biggio thinks a high leg kick he used in his swing until two seasons ago is the primary reason that he’s been plunked so much. When he lifted his front leg to prepare for a pitch, Biggio said, he would become vulnerable to the being hit because he was balancing on his back leg.

He has the bruises — and numbers — to prove it.

Biggio has 12 seasons of being hit by a pitch at least 10 times, a figure that ranks third in major league history. He also has more multi-hit by pitch games (20) than multi-homer games (14) in his career, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

“My first reaction is he must have very bad reflexes,” said Astros catcher Brad Ausmus, Biggio’s teammate for seven seasons. “As long as I’ve known him, his mentality is just to get on base even if it’s a painful endeavor.”

For certain, Biggio finds less painful means of getting on base: he’s a seven-time All-Star who is the Astros’ all-time hits leader with 2,711 entering Friday.

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