• Berkman's father, Larry, once played for the University of Texas and turned Lance into a switch-hitter when he was six years old. Larry hung a tire from a tree in the backyard. And he had Lance swing at the tire with the bat both right-handed and lefthanded—building arm strength without lifting weights.
  
  "My Dad was sort of a baseball nut, so I was always outside hitting and working on both swings," Lance said. "I remember my teammates in Little League wanted me to hit from the right side when it was a big situation, and they would get mad because my Dad would make me switch."

"The man is 6-foot-5, 260 [pounds], and it's his only daughter," Berkman said. "He was not expecting it. It was 1998, right before I came to Spring Training. I told him I wanted to talk to him about something. He said, 'Come over for breakfast.' He thought I was going to talk to him about some kind of financial deal.

"I said, 'I want to talk to you about marrying your daughter.' He says, 'MARRIAGE?' and slaps the counter top. And I was like, 'Oh my gosh! Seriously, give me five minutes and you'll never see me again. Just give me a head start for the door.'"

"This is an entertainment business, first and foremost or at its core," Berkman says. "People like colorful people, and they like colorful quotes and comments. They don't like the same old clichés. I just try to have fun with some of my interviews. I just try to make people laugh."

Although he understands the message he is delivering isn't welcomed by everyone, he vows to continue spreading his testimony.

"The overriding thing has to be a love for people," he says. "If you don't love people, you don't care if we live in a morally degrading society. Christ is about love, and that's what we want to be about as well."

"In society, there's a victim mentality, there's kind of an anything goes, wishy-washy, if-it-feels-good-do-it mentality," he says. "I think it's very dangerous. To me, the buzz word in America is 'tolerance.' You have to tolerate anything. And even if you don't agree with it, it's all about tolerance. And I don't think that's any way to live. Real men are defined by strong values." (Jose Ortiz-Houston Chronicle-1/26/07)

• With dangerous power from both sides of the plate, Berkman is a pure hitter, but he is also a streak hitter. And he has trouble hitting for average against lefthanded pitchers.
  
  When Lance goes up there righthanded, he swings harder because he thinks his swing is so bad he has nothing to lose. "I'm up here swinging hard from both sides," Berkman, a natural lefty, said late in the 2004 season. "But I'm certainly not as aesthetically pleasing from the right side. I have a lot more consistency from the left side. It's easier getting a home run, easier getting a single, working a walk."
• He can hit the ball out to any area of the yard.
  
  

• Berkman has worked himself into being more-than-adequate in left field. When he moved to center field in 2001, he liked it out there. It was a position he had not played since high school. His range and arm are more than adequate. His arm is really just average. But he gets a good jump on fly balls, taking an aggressive approach to defense in the outfield. He has sure hands, positions himself well and gets a good jump. But he will misjudge an occasional fly ball.
• Lance works hard on defense. He prefers left field, but has developed into a good center or right fielder. He has the speed and athleticism to play any of the three outfield spots.

• He is a pretty good first baseman, too. After blowing out his right knee in 2004, he played a lot of first base in 2005 but doesn't move around as well as he would like.
  
  Unlike most first baseman, Berkman doesn't mind throwing the ball to the bases or home plate.

• Lance doesn't run well. He is mostly station-to-station, but will take an extra base if it is there. But he is not at all a base-clogger. And he can even steal a base on occasion. But he gets caught stealing, too. (In 2001, Berkman stole seven bases, but he was caught stealing nine times).

• Berkman's mind tends to wander, occasionally. He has been known to make baserunning mistakes when he was thinking about something else -- usually hitting.
  
  He does the same thing in the field, heading back to the dugout when there are two outs several times during a season. Astros catcher Brad Ausmus estimates it happend six times during the 2005 season. But Ausmus, like the rest of Lance's teammates, respect and count on the big slugger.

• April 1999:  Berkman had surgery to repair a small lateral meniscus tear in his left knee.
• April 17, 2003: Lance missed time with a sprained medial collateral ligament in his left elbow. It was a Level One sprain. (Level One is the least severe, number three is the worst, and number two can require surgery.)
  
  Although he isn't sure, he might have suffered the sprain sliding headfirst into first base when he hit into an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded April 16 at San Francisco. "I hit the bag with my left hand," said Berkman, who suffered a deep abrasion on his right forearm on the slide. "It's never good to slide headfirst. It's a stupid play. You tell yourself not to do it. In the heat of the moment, you're desperate. It was a close game. I had a lot of adrenaline, so I didn't feel anything until after the game. I could have done it on a throw or on that slide, but I don't know."