On Sunday, longtime Houston Astros great Craig Biggio will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. When that's done, perhaps the main takeaway will be that a little versatility can go a long way.

Or, maybe this is a better way to put it: A lot of versatility can go a long way.

To be sure, we can say this in part because Biggio earned his ticket to Cooperstown by being one of the most well-rounded offensive players baseball has ever known. His main claim to fame is his membership in the 3,000-hit club, but he spent his career doing more than just collecting base hits.

Biggio also showed off a combination of power and speed, amassing 291 home runs, 668 doubles and 414 stolen bases. Put it all together, and you get the only player in history to total at least 3,000 hits, 250 home runs, 600 doubles and 400 stolen bases.

Knowing that, it's a wonder it took Biggio three years on the ballot before he was voted into the Hall of Fame. Based on his offensive profile alone, he was a one-of-a-kind player who clearly belonged.

But at the same time, to focus solely on Biggio's offensive versatility isn't doing his career justice. He may have been a jack-of-all-trades on offense, but that might not have been the case had he not also been Johnny-on-the-spot on defense.

If you've forgotten about that, well, it's a fun story.

By reputation, Biggio is entering Cooperstown as an all-time great second baseman. And deservedly so, as Baseball-Reference.com places him 14th among second basemen in career WAR.

But that's not how Biggio's career was supposed to pan out. Rather than a second baseman, he was born and bred to be a catcher.

As Biggio told Michael Bamberger of Sports Illustrated in 1996, he was trained to be a catcher by his father Gordon, a former high school catcher in his own right. And for his part, Biggio's young self was A-OK with this for two reasons.

"I liked catching because I wanted to control the game" was one reason he offered. And the other? "I wasn't a Mets fan or a Yankees fan—I just liked to play—but the one guy I loved was Thurman Munson."

Biggio went on to play primarily catcher at Kings Park High School and also at Seton Hall University under head coach Mike Sheppard. And although, as David Siroty wrote in The Hit Men and the Kid Who Batted Ninth (via Frederick C. Bush of SABR), Sheppard's initial impression was that Biggio was "the worst defensive catcher I had ever seen," that was soon fixed.

"He used to call himself the retriever who became a receiver," Sheppard told Mike Vorkunov of NJ.com. "He became one of the best catchers we ever had."

Biggio also became Seton Hall's captain in his junior season of 1987, a year in which he hit .417. Then came the MLB draft, where he was selected 22nd overall by the Astros.

As Bush noted, some scouts pegged Biggio as a good bet to move off catcher. But the Astros kept him in the squat and watched him hit .375 at Single-A in 1987 and .320 at Triple-A in 1988. The latter effort earned him his first trip to the majors, and the Astros made Biggio their full-time catcher in 1989.

Their reward for doing so? One of the best catchers in the entire league.

In serving as Houston's primary catcher between 1989 and 1991, Biggio hit a solid .277 with a .718 OPS. He wasn't quite as impressive on defense, but that didn't stand in the way of his earning his first All-Star selection in 1991 or establishing himself as one of the league's most valuable catchers.

After the 1991 season, however, Astros manager Art Howe came to Biggio with an idea: How would he feel about a move to second base?

As Biggio told Bamberger, Howe sold the move to second on the grounds it would allow the Astros to make better use of his speed and, as a bonus, it would probably extend Biggio's career. The player agreed to move, but not necessarily because he bought into the logic of it.

"I wanted to do it because everybody said I couldn't," he said. "I'm stubborn."

Biggio wasn't totally inexperienced at second base, as he had submitted to a three-game experiment at second toward the end of 1991. But what the Astros learned during that experience was Biggio didn't have the hands for the infield, a reality that obviously needed a remedy.

For that, Houston third base coach Matt Galante had an idea. During spring training, he had Biggio take infield practice not with a glove but with a sort of paddle attached to his hand.

"I had to stop the ball with the paddle. If you didn't stop it right in the middle of the paddle, it really hurt," Biggio said. "I took about a thousand balls a day with that. Galante said it would develop soft hands. He was right."

Right he was, indeed.

As Houston's full-time second baseman between 1992 and 2002, Biggio won four Gold Gloves. He also established himself as an all-around offensive force, compiling a .293 average and .837 OPS while averaging 16 homers and 28 steals. In terms of overall value, it was Biggio and Roberto Alomar who led the charge among second basemen in those 11 seasons.

With a track record like that, you'd think one of the Astros' primary goals heading into 2003 would have been to keep Biggio right where he was. But they had other plans.

As Jeff Pearlman wrote at Sports Illustrated, Houston general manager Gerry Hunsicker didn't give much thought to how Biggio would react when the team signed slugging second baseman Jeff Kent as a free agent that winter. For him, adding another big bat was more important than "one player's feelings."

Fortunately, there were no hard feelings on Biggio's part. He simply embraced the new challenge that Kent's signing brought: a move from second base to center field.

Now, Biggio had played some center field for the Astros in 1990. But that was when he was 24 years old. He was going to be 37 in 2003. That's an, ahem, advanced age for a guy who is looking to make a move to one of the most demanding positions on the diamond. 

However, Pearlman brought up a good point. Biggio's move to center field would allow Lance Berkman to move to left field and Richard Hidalgo to move to right field, which meant better defensive fits for the two of them. As such, Pearlman reasoned Houston's outfield defense would improve even if Biggio was no better than average defensively in center field.

Time proved Pearlman wise. Though Biggio rated as a below-average defender in 2003, Houston's overall outfield defense did indeed improve dramatically. After ranking 19th in MLB in UZR in 2002, it ranked seventh in UZR in 2003.

And even despite his defense, Biggio was still an adequate everyday center fielder. He hit .264 with a .763 OPS and rated as one of the league's 20 best overall center fielders.

Biggio stuck around in the outfield in 2004, this time splitting his time between center and left field. He didn't handle either position all that well, rating well below average on defense at both spots. After Kent's contract ran out, it was a bit of mercy that Biggio got to move back to second base for the 2005 season.

That ended up being his last good season, as he hit .264 with a .792 OPS and 26 home runs. Though he collected his 3,000th career hit along the way on June 28, 2007, he hit just .249 with a .698 OPS over his last two seasons. At the age of 41, he finally called it quits after 2007.

In the years since, most discussions regarding Biggio and Cooperstown have focused on what he accomplished on offense and where he ranks among his fellow second basemen. The position-hopping Biggio engaged in throughout his career, however, should not be ignored.

Though he played a grand total of 1,989 of his 2,780 career games at second base, Biggio also logged 428 games at catcher, 255 games in center field and 109 games in left field. If you're curious, here's the complete list of players who have played at least 100 games at each of those four positions:

1. Craig Biggio

Yup, that's it. Just him. And without this versatility, there's no ignoring the possibility he might not be on the eve of entering Cooperstown.

If Biggio hadn't made the switch from catcher to second base, he may have never developed into such a good offensive player or lasted as long as he did. And though his move to the outfield came with its bumps, it was a contributing factor in the Astros making the postseason both years. And in those two Octobers, he padded his Hall of Fame resume by hitting a solid .283 across 26 total games.

Biggio's template, granted, is one that we're not likely to see many players follow.

This is in part because talent like his doesn't grow on trees, but also because today's teams are better than yesterday's teams at putting young players in the right spots from the get-go. And of course, there will always be players who are resistant to changing positions.

But if we never again see another player take after Biggio, that would only make his legacy of versatility easier to appreciate.

It allowed him to walk his own path to Cooperstown. And the longer it goes undisturbed by others, the more it's going to stand out as something special.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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