The Padres Geoff Blum was traded to the White Sox last season as they made their run for their first World Series title since 1917. Blum hit a home run in his only World Series at-bat in the 14th inning of Game 3 to give the Sox the vicotry. But what had been going on in Blum's personal life earlier that season never made the news.

Blum talked yesterday of a decision far more demanding than the one posed by the fastball thrown by Ezequiel Astacio.

He spoke of sitting in an Orange County hospital in the winter of 2004-05 with his wife, Kory, trying to decide things parents would rather not.

Kory Blum was approximately 12 weeks into a three-fetus pregnancy. Complications had arisen. The couple was confronted with a scenario: Eliminate the twin fetuses, or risk losing not only the twins, but the third fetus that had shown up in the latest fuzzy picture.

Even if the three survived, the risk of severe brain damage was real – so real, Blum said, that the medical data tilted toward eliminating the twin fetuses by lethal injection.

“Any parent who has to make this kind of decision has my respect,” said Dr. David Lagrew, who is part of the high-risk pregnancy team at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills.

Blum said that for three days he and his wife shed tears and stared at the ceiling in their home as they pondered the news.

“It was tough in the sense of trying to make a decision on whose life to keep,” Blum said yesterday. “On the other hand, it's an easy decision. We knew we wanted all three of them.”

There would be no fretting over what might come, he said.

“As soon as we made the decision to go through it, we were 100 percent all the way – nothing in the back of our minds, not at all,” he said.

“What's life if it's easy? What's the point of that?”

On May 3, Kory gave birth to three healthy girls: twins Ava and Audrey, followed by Kayla.

Despite all the medical technology in the world, sometimes doctors don't get it right. Abortion, or "selective reduction," is so widespread and an easily offered option that doctors would rather take the easiest, safest way -- even when it means killing babies.

You can also see some of the awkwardness that the abortion debate puts on journalism with the "three-fetus pregnancy" terminology. She wanted them, they were babies.

Thankfully the Blums don't have anything against shopping at Costco.