Batting practice at The Elysian Fields

Carlos Lee was in the Rangers lineup Tuesday night despite getting plunked in the left shoulder by third base coach during early batting practice.

The bigger suspense was if Smith was still going to be at third base after hitting the Rangers prized trade deadline acquisition.

"I’ve hit bigger names then him," Smith said. "I hit Tony Gwynn in San Diego. Of course I hit Alex Rodriguez.

"I even hit my son. If I hit him, I’m going to hit anybody."

The laws of probability make it almost certain that you’re going to get hit by Smith, Bobby Jones or Don Wakamatsu, the three Rangers coaches who throw most of their batting practice.

The laws of physics suggest it’s not going to hurt too much. Best guess is they’re throwing it up there at 60-65 miles per hour.

But they throw it up there a lot, beginning in the middle of February and going through the end of the season, 71/2 months if you’re scoring at home.

Smith, 53, has been doing it for 22 years, going back to when his playing career ended in 1982. He was an infielder in the Padres Minor League system who spent 31/2 years in Hawaii and another three years in Amarillo.

That may be the opposite end of the spectrum, but this is also a guy who has his degree from Pepperdine in kinesiology and did a little part-time acting as well, serving as an extra in the 1973 Best Picture The Sting.

So anyway we did a little math on his batting practice tossing and estimated he throws about 300 pitches a day or 9,000 per month. Multiply that by seven – taking off a half-month because there are days off – and that’s 63,000 pitches per year.

Multiply that by 22 years – he was out of baseball for two years – and Smith has conservatively thrown at least 1.3 million batting practice pitches in his lifetime.

"I wish I had a dollar for every pitch I’ve thrown," Smith said. "Think I hold the all-time record?"

So all that happened Tuesday was Carlos Lee joined the club.