[LansdowneSt]

Lance Berkman is a born raconteur. Or as Moises Alou says of his fellow Houston Astros outfielder, "That boy talks some crazy s---." When Berkman tells a story, his hands wave furiously. His Texas twang rises a notch. His eyeballs bulge, and his fingers twitch. Berkman loves his wife and daughter, and he's thoroughly devoted to the art of hitting a baseball, but few things get him more juiced than spinning a yarn.

The only story Berkman doesn't tell is the craziest, most amazing one of all. It's about a pudgy, unrecruited nobody from a Texas high school who, at age 25, has become one of the National League's leading MVP candidates. In his first full major league season the Astros' leftfielder is an indisputable, out-of-nowhere phenom, ranking at week's end in the top 10 of almost every significant hitting category in the league, including second in batting average (.351), third in hits (136) and on-base percentage (.439), fourth in RBIs (92) and runs (83), and eighth in homers (28). "Get Lance going and he'll talk and talk and talk," says Cara, who gave birth to Hannah Leigh, the couple's first child, last month. "But if you expect him to do a lot of bragging, you'll be let down. Lance likes to make people laugh, not build himself up. He sees himself as just another baseball player." - Sports Illustrated

Redid the facegen.