The Astros had a terrible day in the field Sunday afternoon in Kissimmee against the Braves, committing five errors, three of them on 3B Mike Lamb, and lost a close game 6-5 to Atlanta. Roger Clemens and Brad Ausmus committed the other errors to go with Lamb's initial miscue in a three-error first inning that gave the Braves an early lead, but the game was not decided until the bottom of the ninth when, with the infield drawn in and the the tying run at 3B, Jason Lane hit a bullet to SS for a 6-3 out, and Jeff Bagwell struck out against Trey Hodges to drop Houston's record to 12-10-1 for March and disappoint the seventh home sellout the club has had this March.

Atlanta's speed was one factor that got them on top in the first. Rafael Furcal singled to CF and promptly stole 2B. Ausmus unwound a terrible throw, most unAusmus-like, that skipped away into the OF grass, and Furcal made to 3B easily. Then Lamb could not play a hard, bounding ball that jumped up on him from the bat of Marcus Giles. That error allowed Furcal to score and the Braves had the lead without breaking much of a sweat. Giles surprised everybody by swiping 2B and, one Clemens strikeout later, came racing home on Adam LaRoche's base hit to RF. When Andruw Jones banged a ball back toward Clemens, the Astros might have had a chance to turn two, but Clemens cuffed the ball around. Against a man with Jones's speed, any bobble or hesitation is fatal, and Jones reached on the third error of the frame. Clemens and friends were in some deep, deep water as a result of the third error, but Lamb, whose erratic play may be rooted more in inexperience than in lack of athletic ability, made a nice stop on Mark DeRosa's burning grounder, stepped on 3B and fired to 1B for a crucial inning-ending double play.

Houston may have been awful in the field Sunday, but Atlanta wasn't too bloomin' good, either. An error on DeRosa at 3B let Biggio aboard in the bottom of the first against Mike Hampton, and following hits from Ausmus out of the # 2 spot (a single) and a double to LF by Bagwell tied the score. A Hampton wild pitch to Kent--one of three wild pitches Hampton had in six innings of work--moved Bagwell to 3B, and Kent drove him in with a grounder to SS. For a fleeting moment, it appeared Furcal might go after the out at home, but he went to 1B instead. Lamb led off the second with a well-struck homer to LF, and the 4-2 lead looked pretty good, if not exactly safe, with Clemens out there.

But two things happened that no one in the Houston dugout counted on. The defense continued to clank balls, and Hampton found his typical game, down-and-in with the cutter, to choke the Astros offense. With one out in the fifth, Lamb shanked another chance and the Braves had a runner when the Astros shoulda had an out. With a promise that I'll never write "Lamb shanked" ever again, let me say that Chipper Jones made Houston pay immediately for the error, blasting one out of the park to RF to tie the game at 4-4. I can't read Clemens' mind; I have no idea what he was thinking or feeling out there during the Jones at-bat, but if I were Clemens, I'd a been mighty ticked at my third baseman and made too fat a pitch to a hitter who crushes mistakes with the best of 'em. It was a disheartening blow, that Jones homer, and the momentum shift--if such a thing exists in an exhibition game and, late in the spring, I think it does--was noticeable.

Atlanta took the lead in the sixth and, again, a Houston error was a big factor. The Astros could have been charged with two errors in the inning, but Eddie Perez's looping flyball that deflected off Richard Hidalgo's glove after a long run toward the line was ruled a double. That play fostered a moment of frustration, too. Sometimes in my insaner moments I have wished that all hitters would be played straightaway in the OF at all times--makes life so much simpler. But no, Hidalgo plays the odds, risks running forever if Perez happens to hit it to RF, and gets burned for his trouble. Hampton got Perez over to 3B with an easier fly to Hidalgo, and then Lamb booted his third ball of the game, allowing the Braves to retake the lead.

I found today's loss somewhat discouraging and depressing for a reason I'll spell out in a moment, but let me say before I forget that the hard Florida fields may be as much to blame for many of the errors we've seen this spring as poor technique by the players. Lamb isn't a good fielder, but I doubt that he is as bad as he showed on Sunday. Although both he and Morgan Ensberg have done poorly on defense this month, the better-kept infields of the big-league parks will help them both when the season starts.

That said, the defense was still shaky Sunday and when Brad Lidge left one pitch reachable by Gary Matthews, Jr. in the eighth, the son of that good hitter of yesteryear put it out of sight to RF and the gave the Braves a two-run edge.

Discouragement and depression were mine in the bottom of the ninth, when a hit by Jason Alfaro, a walk to Orlando Palmiero, and a well-done 1-4 sac by Biggio put the Astros in business with runners at 3B and 2B and Jason Lane up at the plate to face Atlanta reliever Trey Hodges. When Hodges unleased a wild pitch that allowed Alfaro to score and moved Biggio to 2B, the event looked promising. But then the Braves drew their infield in.

I swear, every time the Braves do that against the Astros, I find myself back in October 1999, with Tony Eusebio batting against a drawn-in Atlanta infield at the Dome. I have so many flashbacks to that terrible event I might as well be on LSD. Here in the present, Lane was up in precisely the kind of game situation the Astros will expect him to deliver upon countless times during the season as a pinch-hitter. These at-bats are the ones he'll be paid for. I do hope--in fact, I believe--that Lane will succeed more than he fails as Houston's biggest bat off the bench in 2004, but in this spot today, he took me back five years to a place I'd have rather not gone. Like Eusebio before him, Lane smashed the ball to SS. This time, Furcal was deeply aware of Biggio on 3B, and Bidge dared not move as Furcal got the out at 1B. That left the game in the hands of Bagwell, but a hit with two outs is harder to come by than a sacrifice fly with one, and Bagwell wasn't up to the task, striking out swinging to end the game and send almost everybody home sad.

The Astros had only five hits Sunday, a cold fact that didn't play well against Alan Ashby's observation that the club is batting .278 as a team this spring. That's the fourth best spring team BA in all of baseball (the top three are in the Martian atmosphere of Arizona), but it is deceiving. The offense is still in "here today, gone tomorrow" mode, and has shown little power or steadiness through 23 games. That will change, I'm sure, as I said the other day, when Houston returns home next Friday, but it still appears that the offense will be an enigma for some time to come--great one game and not so good the next. The Astros are trying to do what any team would do and find a way to build a ballclub that can manufacture a few runs when the sluggers aren't slugging. A team does that by adding speed to its bench, but the two fastest potential Astros, Willy Tavares and Eric Bruntlett, have been liabilities in other ways during ST--Tavares at the plate and Bruntlett in the field. So what are Jimy Williams and Gerry Hunsicker to do? At the moment, it appears that with Saturday's roster cuts--Dax Norris, Alfaro, Chris Tremie, and Mike Coolbaugh--Houston is leaning toward giving Bruntlett a spot, largely because of his speed.

Maybe that's the best outcome, but I can't help it if I've had a dream (I've had it the last two nights), imagining our erstwhile manager and our sly fox GM working on the man to occupy that final roster spot as if they were mad scientists bending over the subject on their slab, laboring deep into the night, with test tubes boiling and lightning flashing through the windows all around, trying to create the perfect 25th man--the ideal combination of a solid hitter who has flying feet. Finally, the moment comes.

"It's alive! It's alive! It's alive!" Hunsicker cries, dancing around as the thing rises from the slab and the drape falls away from his form. A month of work, of patient thought, of infinite trial and error, has gone into the experiment. John Valentin, Jack Hiatt, Mike Coolbaugh, Jason Alfaro, and Eric Bruntlett have all done what they could to contribute to the cause, but, at best, those five have only single elements of what the Astros are looking for. There the silent thing sits, not recognizable at first, but he appears to be what the Astros want. Somewhere between stocky and slim in build, the thing appears to be well-muscled in the legs, but we see only his profile, and we find that, even viewed from the side, he is not so finely developed in the chest or the arms. Alas, the figure becomes gradually familiar to us and, finally, disappointing to our eyes. We've seen his type before. After all the work, all the labor of two of the finest scientific minds in baseball, the best the Astros could do, the utmost they could accomplish in the effort to create the ideal 25th man, was to produce, not an all-around ballplayer, but a thing. And not just any thing. The figure on the slab turns, and we see him at last for who he is. He is a clone. A clone of. . .Glen Barker.

Oh, God, it's a nightmare. Help me wake up. Please, help me wake up.