On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Oakland Athletics (23-19) at Atlanta Braves (20-20) - 7:10 PM ET

It's probably safe to say that out of the former "Big Three" in Oakland, Tim Hudson has been the most successful of the bunch since leaving the nest after the 2004 season. Four seasons later, Hudson faces his former club for the first time (the two teams played a three game set in '05 but Hudson did not make an appearance). A lot of Hudson's old teammates from his last season in Oakland are gone, but his mound opponent for today, Rich Harden, is still around. And Harden was hoping he'd match up against him. Harden is probably also hoping that he makes it through the game intact.

Despite a myriad of other things going on in his life, Roger Clemens isn't ready to hang up his spikes just yet. That's the word out of Houston where Astros owner Drayton McLane said he spoke to the Rocket.

Clemens gave him no indication that he's ready to activate the personal services contract he has with the team, which kicks in upon his official retirement from active play. McLane said Clemens is waiting for his legal troubles to clear up before making up his mind which should mean we'll get word sometime before the Presidential Election. The 2012 Election, that is.

McLane also said his team hasn't ruled out bringing Clemens back to their rotation.

"Would we? We're not even ready to think about that yet. We've got to wait and see what happens. Right now we're not focusing on it at all. We're just going to have to go further down the road and see what unfolds. There are lots of issues out there."

What issues? Why a team would even entertain signing a 46-year old who was no better than average in 2007 is beyond me to begin with but when you throw in the circus that Clemens brings with him these days it borders on the insane. Unlike Barry Bonds, who has the same circus, Clemens isn't worth enough as a player to make up for the rest of the package.

One of the biggest surprises for me to this early point in the baseball season is the mild success of the Astros, who are sitting at 22-17 though almost a quarter of the season after being picked by many people to wallow at the bottom of the NL Central. That's an impressive start, but it's just a start. Well, unless you're Steve Campbell. Steve's ready to hand Ed Wade a key to the city for resurrecting the Astros.

Maybe Smith knew what he was doing with all that inside information after all. Wade is less than a fourth of the way into his first season on the job, and he already has done what many suspected was impossible.

[...]

Brad Lidge, Chad Qualls, Luke Scott, Troy Patton, Adam Everett and Chris Burke were just part of the price Wade paid to reshape a lifeless lump of the 89-defeat team he inherited. Wade traded five players for shortstop Miguel Tejada, three for closer Jose Valverde.

Trading eight players for a shortstop with maybe one or two good years left and a decent closer is a good thing all of the sudden? The Astros are off to a great start, but Lance Berkman's putting up numbers that only Barry Bonds has even dreamed of. Miguel Tejada's hitting like he did when we thought he was 28. Shawn Chacon is pitching like a reasonable starting pitcher. What are the odds of these things continuing? What are the odds of them happening two years down the road when the Astros still don't have those eight players Wade traded away? What's Wade going to do to address their barren minor league system? Shouldn't these questions be answered before saying a GM is a good hire?

Pictured, right: the Canadian national baseball team on their way to practice.

Stubby Clapp isn't going to be a part of Canada's Olympic squad in Beijing this year and it's a damn shame, because the minute or so it took the announcers to talk about how funny his name is would've been the most entertaining minute or so in Canadian baseball this year. The Houston Astros organization should be ashamed of themselves for denying a kinda bad, injured, 35 year old minor leaguer in their employ to pinch hit once or twice on the seventh or eighth-ish place team at the Summer Olympics. Who are they going to get to replace him, Billy Jo Robidoux? That guy isn't even Canadian.

After the jump, today's Dugout, wherein The Stubbster breaks the bad news to his coach, who looks a lot like the singer Sting when you look at him for a while.

Whenever someone makes an all-name list of baseball players, there's always one name that seems to make the cut. He's not a great player but Stubby Clapp has one of the more memorable names of anyone who's ever played the game.

In addition to all-name teams, Clapp's been a mainstay of the Canadian national team since 1999. At 35, that's the only baseball he's still playing, though he's also the hitting coach for Class A Lexington in the Houston Astro system. Still, it's a shame the team has refused to give Clapp permission to play in Beijing this summer.

"The Houston Astros have turned down our request for Stubby to play for us," (Coach Greg) Hamilton told CBCSports.ca. "It's a blow. Stubby Clapp brings leadership to the team and in many ways is the face of the program."

The Astros position is understandable. They hired Clapp to coach and don't want to lose a month of his services while prospects could benefit from his tutelage. But, Clapp hurt his knee in Olympic qualifying and might not even be physically able to play. Why not figure out if it's even possible for him to play before rejecting it out of hand?

The difficulty getting big-name players is a big reason why baseball won't be at the 2012 Olympics. It would be nice if players who devoted themselves to the international game got a chance to go out in style this summer. Plus it would be nice to hear Stubby's name a few more times before he gets lost in the minors.

(H/T BBTF)

People say this a lot, but baseball is often defined by failure. More often than not, a batter fails to get a hit and that's what the game revolves around. Somehow, Lance Berkman's been avoiding this key tenant of late. Before a fifth inning pop-out last night, he'd gotten a hit in eight consecutive at-bats, tying a team record that's only been matched twice in all of Astros' history.

Behind Berkman's hitting and walking (the Nationals walked him twice intentionally last night), the Astros pulled out their fifth straight win, clinched when Carlos Lee singled home Kaz Matsui in the bottom of the ninth. The win actually pulls them into third in the NL Central, ahead of the sliding Milwaukee Brewers, and two games above .500 in what was supposed to be an ugly year for the 'Stros.

So why are they playing so well? It's mostly due to the heart of their order. Berkman, Lee, and Miguel Tejada are all killing the ball right now. On the mound, Shawn Chacon and Brandon Backe are adding some depth to what was supposed to be a painfully thin pitching staff. It's hard to count on a hot start to last when guys like Chacon and Backe are helping carry it, but maybe Ed Wade's crazy "mortgage all of the future for 2008 and maybe 2009 if I'm lucky" strategy isn't as completely insane as we all thought it was. Actually, the Astros are probably just headed straight for the "Ed Wade Zone" this year: 82-85 wins and no playoff berth.

Bible readers are no doubt familiar with Ezekiel 18:20 which reads, in part, that "the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." Human nature, however, doesn't take it as easy on the family of those whose relatives run afoul of the law or the court of public opinion. It's a lesson that Koby Clemens has learned a lot about in recent days.

His father, Roger Clemens, was included in the Mitchell Report and his alleged extramarital affairs have become the topic of conversation around the country. That includes the crowds the younger Clemens plays in front of as a member of Houston's Class A affiliate in Salem, Virginia. He spoke with the New York Post about the difficulties of the past few months.

"I can say that there is no person that could say that they could possibly ever have a better dad than I've had. My dad's always been there for me. My dad's done so much for other people. That's what really fires me up and (ticks) me off."

There's not much to add to what Koby says. He loves his father and supports him through difficult times. We should all hope for the same. It would be nice, if incredibly naive, to think that Koby would be able to just focus on playing for the Avalanche and making his way toward the majors. Because of his last name, though, that's not going to happen. A shame but probably inevitable given the way his father's life is playing out in public view.

It's a plotline so cliched that it actually came right out of a movie. Slugger visits a sick kid in the hospital, promises that he'll hit a homer and then delivers. Cue the triumphant music and crying mom, it's real Hollywood stuff. Until last night, when real life imitated art and Miguel Tejada made good on his promise to a boy named Jacob Scott.

"I am really happy to God for all he gives me and when I talked to that kid I just thought, 'I've got to do something for the kid,''' said Tejada, who presented Jacob with an autographed bat after the game.

Heartwarming stuff, made even better because the Astros donated $10,000 for each of the five homers they hit during the 7-4 win against the Brewers to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

We shouldn't be surprised. He's got a long history of keeping promises to little kids. In 1991, he met a little boy who wasn't allowed to see Silence of the Lambs because he was too young. Inspired by the young man's struggles, Tejada promised to pretend to be younger than he was and not go to the movie either and go tryout for the Oakland A's instead.

Years later in Baltimore, he met little Sally Monforth who was afraid of needles. He promised to help conquer her fears by taking an injection himself. Sure, it landed him on the Mitchell Report but nothing will stop Tejada from keeping a promise to the little ones.

Seeing Kaz Matsui batting lead-off gives me kind of a conflicted feeling. On one hand, I'm happy he's past his horrific off-season injury and I don't have to think about it any more. On the other hand? Why the hell is a guy with a .304 OBP this year and a .324 career mark leading off? Luckily, Cecil Cooper is more than happy to explain to the Houston Chronicle:

"I like Matsui's game, period," Cooper said. "He makes the pitcher work. He's not one of those one-, two-pitch out guys. If you take all his at-bats and total them out, he makes the guys throw strikes. We saw that when we played against him last year.

"At that spot, he can still do the same things that Michael [Bourn] does. He can a steal base. He's a veteran, and this is Michael's first time going through (a prolonged slump). He's sometimes not sure of what he wants to do and how he wants to do it, and this takes the pressure off and lets him just hit and be himself."

Being my cynical self, I went to look up how Kaz Matsui does taking pitches because frankly, managers usually just say stuff like that to justify something that they're doing that no one else likes. Matsui's only played 11 games this year, but it is true that he's seeing 4.2 pitches per at-bat in those 11 games, which would put tie him for tenth in the National League. Career-wise, he's closer to 4.0 P/PA, which is still a decent number. Now if only he could use those pitches to get on base, I might think Cooper was on to something.