Ask a baseball ballplayer his favorite moment, and most likely he’ll talk about his first call-up to the majors and the first game.

And Oriole newcomer Matt Albers has a good yarn to tell — starting with his unexpected call-up two seasons ago by the Houston Astros from its Double-A Corpus Christi Hooks.

“It was a pretty good feeling when I was called into the office [and told], ‘You’re going to New York to be in the bullpen tomorrow.’”

But he just sat in the bullpen through a three-game series between the Astros and Mets.

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His debut came at home in the next game, on July 25, 2006, as Roger Clemens lost a 2-0 decision to the Cincinnati Reds.

“I was a middle relief kind of guy, and the ninth inning came around and I didn’t know I was going to go in. They call me, ‘Albers, you’re in the game.’ Roger Clemens started, and any game he pitched is sold out. I left about 30 tickets in the family section, and I heard them kinda going nuts when I was running out on the field.”

Albers gave up a double to the first batter he faced, Scott Hatteberg, and said he wasn’t aware until his third pitch to the next batter that there was pinch-runner on second. With the count 2-2, Albers grabbed a grounder back to the mound, caught the lead runner halfway off the base and ended up tagging him out in a rundown.

Albers was in the record books — and promptly yanked from the game after an official one-third of an inning.

At 25, he is a contender for the Orioles’ fifth-starter role or, as a fallback, long relief — a decision that likely will be made this week since Baltimore opens its season on Monday.

Pitching since the age of 10, Albers says his first coach was his father — a chemical engineer who kept him and an older brother busy in sports as they grew up on the southwest side of Houston. His mother is an elementary school teacher.

“I was pretty good at it, and I just kind of kept with it,” Albers said.

“Pretty good” is a bit of an understatement, since Albers wasn’t long out of high school when he was drafted by Houston. He attended the local San Jacinto Community College for a year before signing his first contract at the age of 19.

“I got clocked at 95 a few times, and I thought when you’re in college and throwing that, you have at least a pretty good shot at it, at least playing minor league ball.”

He spent five years in Houston’s minor league system but also saw action with the Astros for parts of past two years. He appeared in 35 games, 20 of them as a starter, with a less-than-stellar record of 4-13 and an ERA of 5.87 during the course of 125.2 innings. He had 82 strikeouts and gave up 57 walks, 144 hits and 19 home runs.

Part of the trade that sent Oriole shortstop Miguel Tejada to the Astros, Albers is hoping to find a permanent perch and better his statistics with his new team.

“I think just to have a solid season, either as a starter or in the bullpen,” he said. “I just want to be able to go out there and be consistent. Last year I would have a good game, and then a bad game. Hopefully, I’ll be aggressive to hitters, go right after guys hoping to keep the tempo up.”