And we will call him Theodore…

Or Teddy for short. Ted, which is even shorter.

Yep, the latest addition to the brood made his much-heralded appearance on Saturday morning (Friday night to others) at 2:41 a.m. This came after we arrived at the hospital on Thursday afternoon so that Ellen (my old lady) could be induced with a veritable cocktail of drugs aimed at tenderizing her cervix like an aged piece of Kobe beef.

After more than 25 hours of the midwife administering two different drugs three times like The Candy Man or that groovy purple dude from the psychedelic ‘70s cartoons who drove a microbus and wore high-heeled shoes and a hat with a long feather hanging from the side, they finally decided to go in and break her water. In the biz they call it “breaking the bag,” and when it was ruptured it sounded like a water balloon crashing onto the sidewalk.

Nevertheless, the bag breaking seemed to speed up the proceedings quite a bit and, interestingly enough, when someone says their water has been broken, there really is water… lots of water, in fact – all over the place, too.

Someone had to go and get a mop.

So we sat there in a room up to our ankles in water and caught some of the Carlos Ruiz’s dust-up with consummate sulker Marcus Giles, a whiner of such a high proportion that even baseball players say, “Yo, that dude always has the ass…”

That’s a bit of clubhouse jargon that the scribes lot to trot out amongst themselves and other so-called insiders in order to indicate that they are in the so-called club. It’s not quite a secret handshake, but it might get one into the lobby of the headquarters building.

Anyway, old pal Matt Yallof and I once had a not-too friendly conversation with whiner Giles back when he was playing for the Braves. If I recall correctly, Whiner was upset that Mark De Rosa got a start against a tough right-hander or something. Either way, we weren’t impressed, but then again, I doubt he was either.

You should have seen it the time we tried to chat with Josh Beckett about union issues a few years ago… (insert sarcasm font) what a prince!

After a brief nap and sitting around like we were at Yellowstone waiting for Old Faithful to blow, it was time to push. Well, I didn’t push. I just grabbed a leg and did my best to stay north of the equator. Needless to say it was the fastest, most intense 50 minutes of my life.

And in the end, a big boy (8 pounds, 4 ounces and 22 inches long) with an even bigger name slid out.

Fortunately, Teddy’s big brother Michael is extremely pleased with his new role and his little friend. Teddy’s mother is doing very well considering she pushed something the size of a watermelon out of a passage the width of a crazy straw. Somehow she carried it all out with much humor, panache and grace.

August 25: On this date