WORCESTER, Mass.  Spring is in the air in New England, even if the ground is still too soggy in some places to play baseball.  "Like Yogi Berra said, 'April is the cruelest month'," notes Little League dad Todd Schwab.  "The spring chill really makes you hungry," he says as he and son Todd, Jr. slurp giant sodas while waiting in line for their turn to meet former Red Sox pitcher Rich Garces, a right-hander whose weight was officially listed as 250 pounds during his playing days, but who was believed to be much heavier.  "That was with one foot off the scale," says his former pitching coach Joe Kerrigan.

El Guapo:  "You keep eating like that, someday you'll be in the big leagues!"

Garces, also known as "El Guapo" or "The Handsome One" during his major league career, is part of an outreach program on the part of Major League Baseball designed to keep fat kids from quitting the sport so that they will eventually realize their potential as pitchers.  "We have a program for black kids," says Commissioner Bud Selig," referring to the RBI or 'Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities' initiative, "but we've never done anything to link today's victims of childhood obesity with the overweight greats of the past."

Wells:  "The lunch buffet was picked over, so I ate a batboy."

In San Diego, obese pitcher David Wells has signed on with the Padres for a victory lap to end his career, and he spends time before each game giving kids tips on proper diet.  "You've got to learn to pace yourself," he tells Ronnie Dalrymple, a porky twelve year-old who weighs in at 180 pounds and is a set-up man for the Hungry Crab Marlins, an A-level Little League team sponsored by a local restaurant.  "When you come to the park, get your protein and carbohydrates first with a couple of hot dogs or three and a soft drink, then get an ice cream bar or sundae."  "Uh-huh," the boy says as he nods his head up and down like a bobble-head doll.  "Then and only then do you switch to the low-mass, high calorie foods such as cotton candy."

Livan Hernandez:  "Do you mind if I get something to eat at the seventh-inning stretch?"

The connection between weight and pitching prowess was often suspected, but never confirmed until a study by Kyle Rayl, a member of SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research.  "If you plot the statistics of pitchers going back though the late 1800's," he notes, "you find that the higher the weight, the lower the ERA."

Antonio Alfonseca and his six-fingered hand.

Back east in suburban Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Antonio Alfonseca is instructing some local youngsters in the finer points of fielding his position.  "Those slow-rolling grounders, you want to let your little second baseman or your big first baseman get them for you," he says before agreeing to allow the kids to examine his unique hands, each of which has an extra finger.  "I don't know if it's been a help to me in baseball," he says, "but it allows me to shovel food in my mouth much faster."

Copyright 2008, Con Chapman