Lance Berkman on Lance Berkman

GO OWLS

RT: What about the problems you had running the loop for Coach Graham? Ring a bell?

LB: That is probably the best story - the "Blue Dart." Coach Graham had given us this mandate between my sophomore and junior year. He said, "When y'all come back from summer break, you better be prepared to run Memorial Park," which is three miles, in 21 minutes or less.

My other roommates were all stressed out about it. They had been running and training for it. My attitude was: 'When as a baseball player do you ever have to run three miles, consecutively? It is kind of silly.' I should back up and say that Coach Graham threatened and meant it that if we didn't make it the first time, we would have to continue running it every day until you could get in shape and make it. My attitude was that I didn't think I was going to make it. Then when he would make me run the second time, I was going to make one of my buddies who had made it, pick me up in a truck and drive me around. I had this whole scheme in mind to beat the system.

The morning of the race, my roommates were up at 5 a.m. … I think I woke up at 6:45 and was ridiculously late. I drove up right as the race was starting. As a joke, I wore a royal blue shirt, royal blue shorts, shoes with no socks and I had a royal blue bandana. I called myself the "Blue Dart" and told them that I was going to win the race.

Coach Graham said 'go' and I took off pretty close to full speed. Everybody else was pacing themselves. In my mind, I was thinking that I was going to run around he corner, stop and walk. I knew I just wasn't going to make it. I was just going to mess with some of the guys.

I rounded the corner and I decided to see how long I could maintain the pace before I got tired. Before I knew it, I had run a mile. I ran the first mile in like 5:30. I thought, my goodness, I have already run a mile, let's just keep going. I had already run half the race and I was way in front of everybody. …At about the two-mile marker, reality crashed in on me and a gorilla jumped on my back and I started feeling terrible. But I was two-thirds of the way done with it, so I gutted out that last mile. A pitcher caught up to me and we tied for the victory, and as we crossed the finish line, coach Graham started yelling at me, 'You cheated, Berkman! You cheated!' As soon as I crossed the finish line, I just got on all fours and barfed up all my breakfast.

and another on my favs

RT: Was there a Baker 13 run-through during one of your games?

LB: That was pretty legendary. I think it was in 1996. It was Friday the 13th. It was like late April when we were playing Baylor. … We had just gotten beat by Baylor, and coach Graham was chewing us out. … The Baylor team hadn't even left the dugout, when all of a sudden, we see about 50 naked people. They came into the field through the door, and they start running around the bases. … 50 naked people start running the bases and coach Graham sees the look on our faces. He turned around, and for about five minutes the world stopped. No one said a word. They were yelling, 'Join us!' … coach Graham turned around and said, 'Well there is not much I can say about that,' and he just let us go. The next day in the paper, they asked coach Graham what he though about the incident. He said they ran the bases better and they showed more balls. :rimshot: