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

ALAMEDA, California.  HomeQuest Financial, a subprime lender that has been cited for loan and foreclosure abuses in a number of states, today announced that it would set up a charitable fund tied to individual performances in baseball's postseason play as a way to give back to homeowners who have suffered during the current housing market collapse.

"There's the hammer, it's going--going--gone!"

"We realize in retrospect that maybe we could have done things just a teensy bit differently," says HomeQuest CEO Martin Upchurch.  "If we had known people weren't going to repay our loans, we would have charged them bigger fees upfront."

Don Larsen's World Series no-hitter.

Under the program, HomeQuest will donate $100 for every balk, $200 for every batter who hits for the cycle, and $300 for each no-hitter thrown during the post-season, beginning with today's NL Wildcard playoff game between Colorado and San Diego and ending with the final out of the World Series.

"Peavey's got a no-no going into the 8th.  Don't jinx it by saying anything."

"It's a way for us to say 'Thank you' to all of those familes who vacated their over-leveraged houses peaceably so we didn't have to resort to extreme measures," Upchurch says.  "We really appreciate it when we don't have to rent German Shepherds to secure our properties."

"That wasn't a balk.  Clemens started to pitch, then got bored and went home to Houston."

But, a reporter asks, balks, no-hitters and hitting for the cycle are extremely rare events, meaning that HomeQuest's exposure is minimal at best.  Does Upchurch really expect the dispossessed to benefit much from a program that is so narrowly tailored?

"Talk to the people in marketing," he says.  "I'm more of a big picture guy."