1998-2011: 14 SEASONS OF ORIOLES FUTILITY
1997 was a great year for the Baltimore Orioles. They were in first place wire-to-wire in the America League East; finishing with 98 wins. They had a line-up loaded with stars: third baseman Cal Ripken Jr., second baseman Robbie Alomar, first baseman Rafael Palmeiro, starting pitchers Mike Mussina, Scott Erickson and Jimmy Key, centerfielder Brady Anderson, closer Randy Myers and designated hitter Harold Baines. They breezed through a four game series with Seattle and were favorites to top the Cleveland Indians in the ALCS. Then the team’s bats went mysteriously silent and the O’s fell in six games to the Tribe. The deciding game six saw Mussina and Cleveland ace Charles Nagy battle that ended in a 1-0 11-inning victory for the Indians. The O’s outhit the tribe 10-3 but couldn’t cash in.
With many of the team’s stars returning for 1998, the off-season saw manager Davey Johnson resign after a spat with owner Peter Angelos. He was replaced by long-time pitching coach Ray Miller and the team collapsed to fourth place with a 79-83 record. The most significant highlight in 1998 was Ripken chose to end his consecutive games played streak at 2,632 games. Little did anyone know that Baltimore would go 14 years without a winning record.
1999 was the ill-fated signing of Albert Belle to a record contract; with the team hoping that the oft-troubled star would come to Baltimore and play nice (he didn’t). Alomar and Palmeiro already departed as free agents and the team was starting to crumble around Ripken with the farm system not producing major league quality talent. The O’s also made a knee-jerk signing of free agent Will Clark, whose best days were long behind him. Then, in the span of four days in July of 2000, the Orioles did a major unloading of veterans with shortstop Mike Bordick, catcher Charles Johnson, outfielder B.J. Surhoff, Clark and Baines all being moved. This slew of trades only yielded one significant contributor in outfielder/third baseman Melvin Mora as the O’s were taking up what felt like permanent residence in 4th place in the AL East.
2001 started with a new manager in Mike Hargrove but ended with yet another 4th place finish with 98 losses as Ripken and Anderson announced the end of their playing careers. 2002 showed some promise at the O’s were at the .500 mark in late August, but proceeded to lose 32 of their last 36 games (including their final 12) to once again lodge in 4th place. Long-time Yankees bench coach Lee Mazzilli was hired as manager for 2004 and the O’s improved to 3rd place. 2005 saw Baltimore occupy first place for two months early in the season before an epic second half collapse put them back in 4th place and cost Mazzilli his job.
Fan interest waned through all the losing seasons as two more 4th place finishes followed by four seasons in the basement. The Orioles hired Buck Showalter in 2011, which would be last season of the miserable losing streak. 2012 brought a return to postseason as Baltimore regained its place as one of the better teams in the American League with a core of players like Adam Jones, Chris Davis, Manny Machado, Jonathan Schoop, Chris Tillman and Zach Britton.
Inside The Orioles' Historic Collapse--Anatomy Of A Doomed Season
October 16, 2005 by JOHN EISENBERG, Baltimore Sun
Miguel Tejada should have been upbeat and excited in the clubhouse after the Orioles' victory in Oakland on Aug. 17.
Instead, the Orioles' star shortstop and emotional centerpiece was morose and combative with reporters.
Even though the Orioles had just put themselves back into the playoff race by completing a surprising three-game sweep of the Oakland A's, Tejada seemed to grasp that his team was doomed.
The normally ebullient All-Star showered quickly, put on a pinstriped suit, hid behind sunglasses and snapped at reporters, "Why do you want to talk to me?"
No wonder he was in a bad mood. Everywhere he looked in the clubhouse - or in the entire Orioles organization, for that matter - he saw conflict, question marks, tension, dysfunction. Virtually everyone was either embroiled in controversy or facing uncertainty with the team.
Tejada's gloomy outlook was foreboding: the weight of the many conflicts and problems eventually would bring the Orioles down with a thunderous crash. Their record in their last 92 games (32-60) was the worst percentage-wise since 1900 of any team that played .600 ball over the first 70 games.
Long gone were the high hopes of earlier in the season, when the Orioles had enjoyed a 62-day stay in first place.
They had raised fans' expectations before the season began by trading for Sammy Sosa, one of the game's all-time home run leaders. A rejuvenated Rafael Palmeiro overcame an early slump and charged toward the 3,000-hit milestone. Tejada and Brian Roberts bolted out of the chute as early MVP candidates. And, a young pitching staff delivered on its promise.
Then came the Great Fall of 2005, a cautionary tale about the poisonous effect of uncertainty and bad news on a group dynamic.
Injuries mounted. Sosa proved to be a bust. Palmeiro tested positive for steroids and was suspended. Sidney Ponson pitched poorly and continued to experience off-field problems, including a DUI arrest. Manager Lee Mazzilli was fired. Losses piled up. Fans became embittered.
"It will be another half-century before we go through anything like that again," said Elrod Hendricks, the team's longtime bullpen coach.
Even when the Orioles were riding high after 70 games, they were on the verge of imploding. Some players disliked Mazzilli. The front office was split into factions. The clubhouse was a powder keg waiting to explode.
"Pretty much the whole year was kind of like a dysfunctional relationship," relief pitcher Steve Kline said.
Hope fading fast. Given all the conflict, it was amazing how well the team played early. As the rival New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox floundered, the Orioles led the division for 62 straight days. Fans were beginning to believe they would at least contend for the playoffs, a welcome change after seven straight losing seasons.
Injuries to catcher Javy Lopez and young starting pitcher Erik Bedard and a serious staph infection that sidelined Sosa didn't deter the team.
But the front office suspected all along that it was a mirage.
"We did very well at the beginning of the season, but we took advantage of the schedule. We were home, and we were playing the easier part of our schedule," said executive vice president Jim Beattie.
Knowing the schedule for the second half included four West Coast trips, as opposed to none in the first half, Beattie and others in the organization almost saw the fall coming.
"We knew we needed to be 15, 20 games over .500 by the All-Star break in order for us to have a pretty good year," he said.
They were seven games over .500 at the break and already fading fast.
The collapse began in earnest after the All-Star break. In Minnesota for a three-game series, the Orioles won the opener but lost Game 2 when All-Star closer B.J. Ryan blew his second consecutive save. Then they lost Game 3 when Jason Grimsley allowed a ninth-inning homer.
After the latter loss, players left the field numb. Beginning to doubt themselves, they wordlessly handed their caps to the young clubhouse attendant whose job was to gather equipment.
The situation was ripe for the team to make a major trade to bolster its playoff chances. Weeks of speculation ensued as Beattie and the other man in charge of the baseball operation, vice president Mike Flanagan, sorted through possibilities.
Outfielder Larry Bigbie struggled on the field, distracted by rumors involving him. During batting practice before a game in Minnesota, he saw Beattie talking on a cell phone. The sensitive Bigbie knew exactly what the conversation was about.
He was right. But the trade involving him - Bigbie going to Colorado for Eric Byrnes - was the only one the team made. The players were disappointed, particularly that the team didn't make a deal for Florida Marlins starting pitcher A.J. Burnett. But owner Peter Angelos balked.
"I think a big-time move would have helped us. At the All-Star break, we were right in the thick of things. Definitely, if we would have upgraded, it could have helped us," outfielder Jay Gibbons said.
"This whole Burnett thing was hanging over everybody's head and nothing happened. It was kind of frustrating. I'm not blaming anybody. I'm just saying that we had a shot to improve our ballclub, and we were still in it and we just didn't do it enough."
The front office made suspect moves all season. When center fielder Luis Matos was out with a hand injury, 22-year-old Jeff Fiorentino was called up from Single-A and used instead of veteran David Newhan, who had batted .311 last year. Newhan bristled. Hayden Penn, another low minor leaguer, replaced the injured Bedard.
"We brought up other guys from the minor leagues, which was good for them to experience the big leagues, but I don't think that gives us a good chance to win a division championship," Lopez said.
The Band-Aid moves suggested the organization had its mind elsewhere - and part of it did. While Beattie and Flanagan were focused on the on-field product, their superiors were distracted by the return of major league baseball to nearby Washington, in the form of the relocated Montreal Expos, now the Nationals.
Angelos negotiated intensely with baseball commissioner Bud Selig on a deal that protected the Orioles' bottom line, and then dealt with lawsuits regarding the formation of a regional cable network for both teams, which the Orioles would control.
The front office feared the effect of the Nationals' arrival on attendance and spent all year closely monitoring the situation. Pressed privately, some members of the front office admitted they feared the Nationals' arrival would make it harder in the long run for the Orioles to consistently contend.
On the field, the key losses in Minnesota started a six-game losing streak, which included a three-game sweep by the lowly Devil Rays. The Orioles wound up losing 11 of 12 to end July and start August. Just two weeks after being a half-game out of first place, they were eight out and in fourth place.
Consider what Tejada saw when he looked around the clubhouse that night in Oakland.
Standing nearby was Sosa, who, according to one player, had grown tired of Tejada's constant dugout chatter and told the shortstop as much. Both players later denied the rift, but Hendricks and several other players confirmed it. Tejada was much quieter after Sosa rebuked him, the players said.
Palmeiro and Ponson were also in the clubhouse that night in Oakland.
Palmeiro had recently returned from his 10-day suspension to a clubhouse reception more dubious than publicly alleged. Several players did not even get off their cell phones to speak to him when he tried to shake hands upon returning. A clubhouse loner to begin with, he was now an island.
And Ponson, who would soon face his second drunken-driving arrest in seven months, had already turned off teammates. On the day after his final arrest weeks later, as word of it filtered through the clubhouse, many players frowned and shook their heads, no longer surprised at any news involving Ponson.
Running the team that night in Oakland was an interim manager, Sam Perlozzo, who had replaced Mazzilli in early August and had no idea if he would be retained for next year. (He was given a three-year contract last week.)
Mazzilli's firing on Aug. 4 delighted many players. They had long before become disenchanted with the second-year manager.
"Pretty much everybody was unhappy with him," one player later said.
The players performed for him early in the season, but as injuries to pitcher Bedard and catcher Lopez exacted a toll, they were confused by his moves. Third baseman Melvin Mora went into Mazzilli's office to ask why he kept being shuttled between second and third in the batting order. Relievers John Parrish and Rick Bauer went weeks without pitching. Kline publicly hinted that Mazzilli had no clue.
As the team faded, Mazzilli fretted, knowing his job was in jeopardy. One day he closed his office door and voiced his concerns for a half-hour to a reporter. When told that more respondents to an Internet poll had voted to keep him rather than let him go, he perked up and asked to see the Web site. The reporter pulled it up on a computer.
As with many Web polls, Mazzilli had to vote on the question (should Mazzilli be retained?) before he could see the results.
He playfully voted that he should not be retained before peering at the poll results.
Meanwhile, Mazzilli was dealing with obstacles few others knew about. Trying to wake up Sosa's bat, he moved Sosa to second in the batting order for several days, only to have word come down from ownership that Sosa hadn't been obtained to bat second, a spot usually reserved for a good bunter.
Contacted recently, Mazzilli recently declined to rehash the season and what went wrong.
By August, the players were upset with the front office for having failed to improve the team by making midseason trades; and the front office, in turn, was upset with several players . Matos was perceived by some in the organization as lazy and immature. Bedard had a prickly personality. Pitcher Daniel Cabrera was loathe to take instruction.
Meanwhile, the front office was split into palpable factions - but not between supporters of Beattie and Flanagan, the team's two baseball decision-makers. Rather, the conflict was over scouting methods. One side believed in the traditional approach. The other side wanted to give more weight to psychological tests.
Flanagan was in favor of emphasizing the tests; he had brought in Dave Ritterpusch, a former Orioles scouting director who has delved deeply into analyzing the tests, even telling a reporter he had "cracked the code." Some members of the scouting and personnel departments didn't want to emphasize the tests. Beattie was ambivalent.
Adding to the tension, the contracts of Beattie and Flanagan were due to expire at the end of this month.
Last week, Flanagan was promoted, and Beattie pushed aside and offered a consultant's role. Ritterpusch is still standing
The Orioles' problems on the field were easy enough to dissect. Their offense, one of the American League's best early on, was one of the worst for the rest of the season. Their starting rotation, so solid early, fell apart as Bedard, Ponson and Cabrera struggled.
With the decline on the field, their clubhouse, a volatile mix of superstars and impressionable young players, fell apart, several players said. It was no surprise to one veteran.
"I was talking with [another player] early in the season, and we were saying that if we started losing, things are going to get really bad in here," the veteran said. "Winning cures a lot of things, but this clubhouse is pretty bad. It's been that way for a while."
Obvious factions existed. The Spanish-speaking players had their own group. So did the relievers. Veterans such as Roberts and Gibbons hung together. Palmeiro, Ponson, Sosa and Lopez were often on their own.
Rarely, several players said, did all the groups mix. Asked if jettisoning Ponson, Sosa and Palmeiro late in the season helped, the veteran said, "It did, but more changes still need to be made."
The divisions were never more evident than on the August night when Cabrera nearly incited a brawl at Camden Yards by hitting Toronto's Eric Hinske in the back with a pitch both teams knew was intentional. Many Orioles were critical of Cabrera rather than supportive of their teammate, saying that was a good way to get someone hurt.
Later in the season, Cabrera got into a shouting match with Tejada in the dugout during a game.
Tejada was the unquestioned leader, respected by all. But several players said the shortstop wasn't himself for much of the season, and his palpable drop in energy affected the entire team.
"It's more than you or I know. Something's not right with him," one member of the front office said.
Tejada acknowledged he was dealing with distractions but never identified them. Some teammates felt all the losing just brought him down. Hendricks said it was the rift with Sosa. Some teammates felt it bothered him knowing his name would eventually surface in the Palmeiro controversy, as it did in September when Palmeiro told investigators Tejada had given him a dose of B-12 that could have been tainted.
Even though Tejada was cleared, he admitted he often gave himself B-12 injections. Some fans were troubled by the image of the team's best player walking around with a syringe, and several players said it was curious to see Tejada carefully guarding a briefcase he always carried.
Even when he was upbeat, Tejada was quiet in the clubhouse, not one to chide. Several players said the team lacked a clubhouse leader, a veteran who would get in a teammate's face and correct unacceptable behavior. Jeff Conine filled that role before he was traded to the Marlins in 2003.
As a result, some unacceptable behavior was tacitly condoned. Two players confirmed that rookie infielder Bernie Castro, a September call-up, was late for batting practice three times during the final homestand.
"They act like that is OK, and it's not OK. That never should happen with a rookie," said one player, who added that Castro's behavior wasn't corrected.
The bullpen, normally a quiet place, was a source of dissension all year. Kline, a free-agent acquisition, pitched poorly and fell out of favor with fans after telling a St. Louis reporter he wished he had never left the Cardinals. Aside from feuding with Mazzilli, Kline also had problems with teammates after he refused a minor league assignment, forcing the team to release James Baldwin, a popular long reliever. Baldwin was later reacquired.
Several players resented Kline's habit of holding court with the media, rolling their eyes at the sight of him surrounded by a group of reporters.
Ryan flourished as the new closer, but his predecessor, Jorge Julio, struggled, as did veteran setup man Steve Reed, who was eventually released. As the season was falling apart, several relievers became increasingly upset with Mazzilli, pitching coach Ray Miller and Hendricks. Two relievers were seen carrying a toy hatchet at Yankee Stadium, joking that it was bloody because it had been put in their backs.
One player complained that Hendricks, a popular fixture, was a negative influence, offering no constructive criticism and "complaining about everything" from the first pitch every night.
Hendricks, who suffered a mild stroke early in the season but came back to coach, shrugged off any perceived conflict.
"When things aren't going good, people can get very, very edgy. This was no different," he sai
After Mazzilli's dismissal, the team went 23-32 under Perlozzo, looking increasingly dispirited. In fairness, with Palmeiro and Ponson banished and Sosa and Roberts injured, Perlozzo had little better than a Triple-A team.
As the losses mounted, many players hid in the training room, weary of talking about steroids, Ponson and losing. One day, Mora, an affable veteran, was asked for an interview. "What do you want to talk about?" he asked in return. Told the subject was Palmeiro, he declined.
One player who faithfully stood at his locker and faced the heat was Gibbons, but he was reprimanded by the organization for admitting in September he couldn't wait for the depressing season to end.
Another player later confirmed everyone on the team felt the same way.
"People can say [the controversies] didn't affect us, but I think it did," catcher Sal Fasano said. "A lot of the focus moved away from playing the game. It was like, `What's going to happen today? Is the manager going to get fired? Is somebody going to get a DUI? Is someone going to get accused of steroids? Is there going to be another injury?' There was always something.
"I'm not making excuses for why we lost, but it's tough to concentrate on what the bottom line is when you have all this stuff going through the clubhouse every day. That made it pretty rough."
Javy Lopez agreed, saying the persistent controversies "obviously were a distraction." Hendricks added, "It just drained a lot of the guys. You could see the energy just go out the window."
Even if there is a ninth straight losing season in 2006, it can't possibly match the eighth as a total collapse.
"It was a tough year," Mora said. "When we needed the offense to produce, we didn't produce. When we needed to pitch, we didn't pitch. And all that was going on outside the clubhouse. There was a lot. Hopefully next year, we can just concentrate on the games."
Aparicio ready to lead chagrined O's fans in protest
September 21, 2006 by Kevin Cowherd, Baltimore Sun
You say you've had it with the Orioles this time.
You've had it with nine straight losing seasons. With another meaningless September. With a jewel of a ballpark that sits empty and forlorn, except when it's invaded by thousands of beered-up Yankees and Red Sox fans who spit peanut shells on your shoes and flirt with your girl and spill out onto Eutaw Street bellowing and high-fiving each other whenever their team clobbers your team, which is pretty much always.
You've had it with an owner who has the PR touch of Tony Soprano, and with watching a once-proud franchise steadily turn into the Chuck E. Cheese of baseball.
OK, we feel your pain.
So what're you doing this afternoon?
"Nasty" Nestor Aparicio, the Dundalk guy who's been a radio personality in this town for years and owns WNST ("Sports Talk 1570"), is hoping you'll show up at the "Free the Birds" protest rally he's organized at Camden Yards, when the Orioles play the Tigers at 4:05.
Aparicio, 38, is the little guy who always thinks big.
So today he envisions thousands of ticked-off fans in black "Free the Birds" T-shirts marching through the streets to Oriole Park, congregating in the upper deck, then walking out en masse an hour or so later to deliver a simple message: It's time for O's owner Peter Angelos to go.
"He needs to realize he's hurting the city," Aparicio says, offering the owner this advice, free of charge: "If you want to help this city, you'll put your ego aside, take the check [offered by a prospective buyer] and step aside.
"Today is Election Day, and you've been voted out."
If that sounds a little heavy-handed - a little Paulie Walnuts, even - understand that to Aparicio, the ruination of the Orioles ispersonal.
He traces every good thing that's ever happened in his life to baseball. His beloved Pop passed on a love of the game that young Nestor found intoxicating, and which pushed him into a career talking sports into a microphone.
His 87-year-old mom, Eliza, still watches every O's game on TV with a cold beer in one hand. His uncle, the great shortstop Luis Aparicio, is in the Hall of Fame.
All these years later, he still gets misty-eyed by memories of Frank and Brooks and Jim Palmer, Eddie and Cal; magical late-inning rallies at old Memorial Stadium; "Wild Bill" Hagy leading O-R-I-O-L-E-S! cheers atop the dugout with half a Budweiser brewery sloshing around in his gut; Cal taking a joyous lap around the field after 2,131.
"Look at this!" Aparicio said the other day, rummaging through a box in his downtown apartment overlooking the Camden Yards warehouse and O's executive offices, the nexus of all evil, in his mind. "Every ticket of every game I ever attended! All my press passes! Newspaper clippings from the '79 Series! This box is the story of my life!"
But by the middle of this summer, with the Orioles stumbling to another fourth-place finish and management seemingly indifferent to its hugely turned-off fan base, Aparicio had basically given up on the team.
When does Ravens training camp open? now consumed him.
But after Sun columnist Rick Maese wrote in July about the idea of Oriole fans protesting, and Aparicio was quoted as saying it wouldn't do any good - "A protest? Come on. This is the same way the East Germans felt when the wall was up all those years" - he
Nasty Nestor, the Dundalk guy who bled black and orange, had a new cause to champion.
Camden Yards isn't a place of celebration anymore, he thought. It's a burial ground. We have to change that.
So we'll see what happens out at the burial ground today, when the Birds take on the Tigers.
"If we don't have 5,000 [protesters]," says Aparicio, "I'll be astonished."
Whatever the number, they'll march to the stadium in their "Free the Birds" T-shirts and gather in the upper deck and scream and cheer for the Orioles.
Then at precisely 5:08 - "5 for Brooks, 8 for Cal," says Aparicio, ticking off the uniform numbers of the O's legends - they'll stand and walk out.
Maybe Angelos will heed the protest.
More than likely, he won't.
And the odds of his sticking a "For Sale" sign on the ball club anytime soon are long.
But protests aren't built on odds. They're built on raw emotion.
And no matter what happens at Camden Yards today, Aparicio wants people to know he's not doing this to gin up publicity for his radio station.
"I'm doing it because I miss baseball," he says softly. "I miss the memories."
An instant later, gazing out his living room window at the shimmering ballpark, he brightens.
"Let's go tear the Berlin Wall down!" he says, in a voice loud enough to be heard at the warehouse.
If only they were listening.
Birdbrained--- Under the misguided stewardship of Peter Angelos, the once-proud Orioles have become the laughingstock of baseball--and the worst may be yet to come
Tom Gordon, a free-agent righthanded relief pitcher, wanted to be a Baltimore Oriole. He liked the idea of closing games for a monied franchise with a loyal fan base and a jewel of a ballpark in baseball-mad Charm City. Syd Thrift, the Orioles' vice president of baseball operations, invited Gordon and his agent, Rick Thurman of Beverly Hills, Calif., to fly to Baltimore in November to finish the deal. The two sides had the parameters in
place: a $2.5 million base salary with incentives that could make Gordon among the highest-paid closers in baseball if he finished more than 60 games. Gordon wanted those terms over four years. Thrift floated three years or three plus a club option
for a fourth. Sensing that an agreement was near, Thurman booked a flight from California.
Thurman arrived before Gordon at the Orioles' offices inside the imposing redbrick converted warehouse next to Camden Yards. He was escorted into a conference room adjacent to the office of Peter Angelos, Baltimore's principal owner and managing partner. Angelos is a famously successful litigator who has amassed a fortune largely on health-related claims, especially involving asbestos and tobacco. He is hypersensitive to ballplayers' health, though his track record for signing durable players is awful. After the meeting with Thurman began, it didn't take Angelos long to realize that Thrift had talked about guaranteeing three years of salary to a guy who had missed the entire 2000 season after blowing out his elbow. "Come into my office," Angelos told Thrift.
Thurman was left sitting in the conference room while Thrift, a 71-year-old with a perpetual hangdog look, shuffled behind Angelos. The door to the owner's office closed, but it did nothing to insulate Angelos's anger. For the next hour Thurman sat listening to Angelos berate Thrift at paint-blistering volume. Finally, the door opened. Angelos made it clear to Thurman that the deal had changed. Three years was out of the question. Gordon, upon hearing about the scene from Thurman, wasn't so sure he wanted to be an Oriole anymore. Later that day Thurman asked Angelos whether he thought free-agent ace righthander Mike Mussina would be returning to Baltimore. "He's not going anywhere," Thurman recalls Angelos responding. "I'll give him free legal services. He wants to stay here. I know him too well."
Within the next few weeks Mussina signed with the New York Yankees and Gordon signed with the Chicago Cubs. Earlier, free-agent shortstop Jose Valentin had taken less money over fewer years than the Orioles had offered and re-signed with the Chicago White Sox. Before Alex Rodriguez worked out his record $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers, Angelos requested to negotiate with his representative, Scott Boras, on a top-secret basis; Rodriguez told the Orioles not to bother. Two other free-agent righthanders, starter Kevin Appier and reliever Jeff Nelson, rejected Baltimore's offers and signed with the New York Mets and the Seattle Mariners, respectively.
"It's like we have Confederate money; it's no good," Thrift said in his folksy Appalachian drawl at baseball's December winter meetings. (Thrift says that the Orioles "never got involved with" Rodriguez and that he had no disagreements with Angelos about the Gordon negotiations. Angelos didn't respond to a request to be interviewed for this story.) When Baltimore found players to take its money, they were older ones with limited market value: shortstop Mike Bordick, 35 (two years, $9.5 million), who was returning to the Orioles after spending most of the second half of the 2000 season with the Mets; first baseman David Segui, 34 (four years, $28 million), who also had played for Baltimore; and righty Pat Hentgen, 32 (two years, $9.6 million).
On and off the field, the fall of the Orioles has been swift. In 1996 and '97 they came within two victories of playing in the World Series, but they haven't had a winning season since, losing more games and more paid fans with each successive year. Last year, in tribute to their dullness as well as to their ineptitude, they attracted fewer fans on the road than any other team in the majors.
To hear Angelos tell it, he's a local boy who returned the Orioles to Baltimore ownership, having purchased them for $173 million in 1993 out of bankruptcy court from New Yorker Eli Jacobs. Barring a stunning rise--"They're terrible; they could finish behind Tampa Bay [in the American League East]," predicts one scout--Angelos in 2001 will give his hometown something it has not seen since big league baseball returned there in 1954: four straight losing seasons.
Worse, a perdition of the franchise's once brick-solid reputation also has occurred under Angelos. His slash-and-burn management style--he has whacked his way through four general managers, five managers and six pitching coaches in his seven seasons, to say nothing of the player turnover--has made Baltimore the object of scorn and amusement around the game. "The most dysfunctional front office in baseball," declares one prominent agent, who said he communicates with the Orioles mostly by letter because telephone calls often go unreturned. Another agent says Baltimore is such an unstable organization that one of his clients, an Oriole himself, advised his other clients this winter, "You don't want to come here." "The sad part is that with their fans, ballpark and tradition they should be one of the crown jewels of the game," says an American League executive. "But they're almost a laughingstock. It's a shame."
In December, Thrift appeared on a Baltimore radio show to take calls from fans. One of them asked him about an Orioles prospect named Gary Dell'Abate. "I've heard that name, yes," Thrift said on the air. Well, the caller said, Gary Dell'Abate is the name of Howard Stern's producer.
Meanwhile, former Orioles executives with upstanding reputations are scattered around baseball. The expatriates include general managers Pat Gillick (Mariners), Kevin Malone (Los Angeles Dodgers) and Doug Melvin (Rangers), Roland Hemond (White Sox executive adviser to the general manager), Major League Baseball vice president Frank Robinson and Atlanta Braves assistant G.M. Frank Wren. Dan O'Dowd, now the Colorado Rockies' general manager, rejected an overture from Angelos in 1998 to take the same post in Baltimore after a meeting in which Angelos hinted the general manager's latitude would be narrow.
What the 71-year-old Angelos (known as The Old Man to Orioles insiders) has left in his inner circle are his sons, John, 33, and Louis, 31 (known as The Boys), and Thrift, who has survived seven years under Angelos. Thrift is credited with helping found in 1970 the now defunct Kansas City Royals Baseball Academy, a developmental program for prospects. As general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates from '85 through '88, Thrift hired manager Jim Leyland and brought the Bucs to the cusp of contention. He has bounced from jobs in and out of baseball and among six organizations. As for his years in Baltimore, Thrift variously is described by former colleagues as "a mole" for Angelos, "an I guy, not a team guy" and a "knowledgeable baseball man" caught under Angelos's thumb.
"The problem with the Orioles is poor leadership," Malone says. "Peter is so involved in so many aspects of his own life that it's hard for him to make the right decision because he stays focused on baseball only 10 percent or 20 percent of the time. You have to have your pulse on the day-to-day operations of the game. Peter is in and out. It's hard to make the best decision when you don't have a feel for it."
Angelos, as one owner likes to point out, has never taken a partner into his law practice. He's the Orioles' de facto general manager whenever he so chooses, as happened after a lackluster first half of the 1996 season when he refused to allow then G.M.Gillick to trade outfielder-DH Bobby Bonilla and lefthander David Wells for young players (one of whom was budding slugger Jeromy Burnitz). Baltimore rallied and won the wild card. "That is what emboldened him," says one National League general manager. The next year Angelos killed a deal that would have sent Jeffrey Hammonds, a talented but injury-prone outfielder, to the Toronto Blue Jays for outfielder Shawn Green, whose progress had stalled but who would blossom into a star the next season.
Angelos spent lavishly and imprudently in his twin desires to reward the fanatical support of Baltimore fans and to keep up with the Yankees, his American League East archrivals. No man ever spent so much money to lose so many games. At the beginning of each season, the Orioles have ranked first, third and third, respectively, in payroll ($83 million in 2000) during their three-year losing skid.
Without a source of young talent, Angelos has continued to sink money into his aging roster. After the 1997 season he gave outfielder Brady Anderson a five-year deal. Anderson has hit only .260 over the first three years of the contract and, at 37, has
exhibited declining skills in centerfield. In '98 the Orioles gave five-year deals to outfielder-DH Albert Belle and righthander Scott Erickson, a four-year deal to righty closer Mike Timlin, a three-year deal to second baseman Delino DeShields and a two-year deal to first baseman Will Clark. Erickson blew out his elbow last season and will miss most of this one; Belle, who hit only five home runs in the second half of last season, has a worsening arthritic right hip; Timlin was a bust and Clark was often injured before they were traded last season. DeShields, now an outfielder, did have a productive 2000 season (.296, 37 stolen bases). Ripken, meanwhile, signed a one-year, $6.3 million contract in November, though he's 40 and fighting a cranky back that contributed to a .310 on-base percentage last year, worse than all but 11 of the 116 American League players with at least 300 at bats.
In a cruel twist, Angelos's anxiety about fragile players cost him a healthy pitcher in his prime after the 1999 season. He and Thrift negotiated a four-year, $29 million contract with free agent Aaron Sele, then 29 and an 18-game winner who had thrown 205 innings for Texas that year. Angelos, though, tore up the deal after he saw his team physicians' medical reports, which indicated Sele had some wear and tear in his right shoulder. Angelos, concerned that Sele might not hold up for four seasons, decided the deal should be for three years; Sele and his agent, Adam Katz, angered about having the terms peremptorily changed, wouldn't consider it. Sele instead made a deal with Seattle and its new general manager--Gillick. Sele took two years from the Mariners rather than three from the Orioles, then helped pitch Seattle into the American League Championship Series with a team-high 17 wins and 211 2/3 innings, 10th highest in the league.
This season Baltimore will replace Mussina (the league leader in innings in 2000 with 237 2/3) at the top of the rotation with either Hentgen, who had a 4.72 ERA for the St. Louis Cardinals last year, or Jose Mercedes, a 29-year-old journeyman who pitched
145 2/3 innings last year. Only three players from the American League East champion 1997 Orioles have continuously remained with the team since: Anderson, Erickson and Ripken. (Bordick and righthander reliever Alan Mills left and have returned.) From that club, the only major league players Baltimore has to show for losing free agents Mussina, second baseman Roberto Alomar, first baseman Rafael Palmeiro and reliever Arthur Rhodes, and for
trading Hammonds, reliever Armando Benitez and leftfielder B.J. Surhoff are catchers Brook Fordyce (obtained from the White Sox for Charles Johnson, who was obtained for Benitez) and Fernando Lunar (obtained from the Braves for Surhoff), and righthander Luis Rivera (who also came in the Surhoff deal).
The names have changed, but the Orioles retain the most illogical profile for a major league club: They are old and expensive without being a contender. Seven of the nine spots in their batting order this year are likely to be filled by players 30 or older. Making matters worse, under the new, unbalanced schedule Baltimore will play more than one third of its games against the three American League East stalwarts, the Yankees, Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox. "They're four or five years from being seriously competitive," says one National League general manager.
Angelos appeared to have found the right man to rebuild the Orioles following the 1998 season, after Gillick's departure upon completion of his contract. As his general manager Angelos hired Wren, then 40 and considered one of the promising executives in baseball. Wren had helped cultivate a bountiful Montreal Expos farm system in the late '80s before serving eight years as the assistant G.M. of the Florida Marlins, who won the '97 World Series.
Dozens of baseball people warned Wren about the Orioles job. But this was his first chance to be a general manager. This was the Orioles. They had money. Gillick was one of the people who cautioned Wren about working for Angelos. "Look at it like you're
going there for three years, you'll get your experience and you'll be moving on," Gillick told him.
Three years? Wren quit after two weeks. Angelos talked him out of it. Wren and his scouts had long afternoon meetings in which they charted the organization's course, only to have Angelos or one of his sons call at 11 p.m. to say they were going in a different
direction. For instance, Wren decided one afternoon to go after free-agent lefthander Randy Johnson. That night Angelos told him the Orioles had no interest in Johnson.
Another time that winter, upon hearing the Yankees were negotiating with Belle, who was a free agent, Angelos asked Wren, "What do you think about Albert Belle?" Belle's name hadn't come up until then. "As for talent, it's a no-brainer," Wren says he replied, "but as for everything else, including the percentage of the payroll he'd take up, I'm not sure." Angelos gave Belle $65 million over the five years.
Meanwhile, Wren, at the urging of Gillick and others, tried to keep Thrift at arm's length. Gillick had portrayed Thrift as untrustworthy and motivated by advancing his own standing with the owner. Gillick had inherited Thrift on his staff when he was named the Orioles' general manager on Nov. 27, 1995. Within Gillick's first month on the job, Baltimore acquired four players through free agency and trades who would be instrumental in getting the Orioles to the American League Championship Series in 1996: Alomar, Surhoff, Wells and reliever Randy Myers. Thrift says that Gillick was responsible for none of those additions. "B.J. Surhoff, I knew him from his college days," Thrift says. "My son and he were teammates at North Carolina. Myers was with me with the Cubs. Mr. Angelos signed Alomar. Gillick didn't like [Reds general manager Jim] Bowden. I made the deal with Cincinnati for Wells."
When he was hired, Wren was told by a high-ranking Baltimore executive, "You can't fire Syd, but you can reassign him to get him out of your hair." So Wren sent Thrift on special scouting assignments. In the last week of April 1999, Wren scheduled a routine conference call for May 1 among his full-time scouts to discuss the first month of the season. Thrift got wind of it. "Where's that conference call going to be?" Thrift asked Wren.
"In my office," Wren replied.
"Who's going to be on it?" Thrift asked.
"What difference does it make?" Wren said.
"I just want to know."
"None of your business. I said the major league scouts."
"What's it going to be about?"
"You'll find out, Sid."
"Excuse me, but am I stupid? Was that a bad question I asked?"
"I don't think it's you who wants to know," Wren said.
Asked last month about his relationship with Wren, Thrift fairly sang, "I got along with Frank Wren just fine."
The day after his blowup with Thrift, Wren was summoned to Angelos's office. Angelos lit into him for keeping Thrift out of the loop. Wren returned fire. "My contract says I report to you and you only," Wren remembers saying. "If it's changed, you can fire me right now!"
Angelos shot back, "That f------ Gillick's gotten to you!"
Angelos and Wren, their faces reddening, screamed at each other for two hours, bringing stunned office workers within earshot to a halt. That night Wren carried his dinner on a tray into his box at Camden Yards just as the Orioles' game began. His assistant, Bruce Manno, sat next to him. Then John and Louis Angelos walked in, crossed their arms over their chests and asked Manno to leave. Not until the seventh inning did The Boys leave, making sure Wren understood he was never again to raise his voice like that to Thrift or The Old Man.
When Angelos bought the Orioles in 1993, he asked Larry Lucchino, Jacobs's top executive, to stay on. Lucchino wondered what role Angelos's sons would play in the organization. "Let me assure you my sons have 10 years practicing law ahead of them until they setfoot in the warehouse," Angelos replied. Lucchino decided to leave. (He's now president and CEO of the San Diego Padres.) Within three months after Peter Angelos gained control in Baltimore, John was named special assistant to the chairman. He's now listed as executive vice president. Louis has no title in the organization. Says Thrift, "Louis isn't involved, and John'sprimary involvement is the business operations. He's not involved with trades or signings."
Wren remained defiant that night in his box in front of The Boys. "You don't want me around?" he said, "Fine. Fire me right now. I'll be more than happy to leave."
Angelos did fire Wren--BUT NOT UNTIL four days after the Orioles had concluded an 84-loss season. Angelos used the same tactic to explain the firing to the public that he'd employed when he ran off manager Davey Johnson after the near-championship '97 season: blow up a trivial incident as a fireable offense. Johnson had resigned on the day he was named American League Manager of the Year as a result of a squabble with Angelos over Johnson's assignment of a fine paid by Alomar to a charity that employed Johnson's wife, Susan. This time Angelos said Wren had to be fired because (among other reasons) on Sept. 17 he'd ordered a team charter plane to leave on time rather than wait for Ripken, who had called to say he'd be late. About 50 players and staff members had gotten to Baltimore-Washington International Airport on time for that morning's eight o'clock departure. The universal first rule of baseball is: Be on time. Did Angelos, who had tweaked Ripken in the past for not exerting enough leadership, realize that thestory looked worse for the beloved franchise player than for the general manager? "He put Cal right in the middle of it," one National League executive says. Says another owner, "He did the same thing to Mussina. He sent a letter to season-ticket holders saying he was holding prices because he didn't sign Mussina. If Mussina had re-signed, the prices would have gone up. You're blaming a [potential] ticket increase squarely on your best pitcher. Great."
For two months after Wren's firing, Angelos split the general manager's duties among a committee of executives and then in December 1999 named Thrift as his point man. When told that Malone had found Angelos too removed from the daily operations of
the club to make fully informed decisions, Thrift said he speaks with Angelos regularly. "There aren't many days that I don't have a conversation with Mr. Angelos," Thrift said.
Wren, even in one tumultuous year in Baltimore, may have left his imprint on the club. The Orioles had seven of the first 50 picks in the 1999 draft. They spent a lavish $8.125 million in bonuses on those seven players. That draft, the first for well-regarded director of scouting Tony DeMacio, who came to Baltimore from the Cubs, began a restocking of the farm system that has drawn raves from scouts and general managers. Yet the Orioles may have to endure at least two seasons similar to the past three until that wave of players is ready.
Meanwhile, the Baltimore-Washington media have an obvious villain. Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser called Angelos "a Napoleonic egomaniac"--and that was after the winning 1997 season. His colleague, Thomas Boswell, wrote after Mussina's defection, "The only person in baseball who does not realize now that Angelos has decimated the Orioles franchise is Angelos himself."
"Peter Angelos is a brilliant guy," says one baseball owner. "He's a brilliant lawyer. He has a lot of charisma. But there's little sympathy on the ownership level for what's happened there. I don't think he cares about the opinions of reporters. I think he cares about the people of Baltimore. After buying from Eli Jacobs, he was their Caesar returning in triumph. If Baltimore turns on him--his people--that will bother him."
Any signs of such a revolution are but stray shots in a monumental love affair with baseball by a city that has a recent infatuation with its NFL champion Ravens and no NBA or NHL presence. After the 1999 season there was a loosely organized protest on the Web, and the Orioles have lost 5,000 paying customers per game since '97. Even so, Baltimore last year drew 3,295,128 fans to its Wrigley-by-the-Inner-Harbor, a higher home attendance than all other teams except the Cardinals, Cleveland Indians, and San Francisco Giants.
More telling was the scene at the Baltimore Convention Center on Jan. 13. It was the eve before the Ravens were playing for a berth in the Super Bowl. It was the dead of a dark winter in which Mussina, a popular homegrown Oriole, left because Angelos never made him feel wanted. Still 10,000 people paid $5 (children and senior) or $10 apiece to cram into the Convention Center for the Orioles' annual Fanfest. Twenty thousand game tickets were sold in the first hour alone. This was real money, not Confederate money.
Three years witness to a downward spiral, Baltimore pushed the calendar ahead to those warm summer nights when Camden Yards still sparkles like the best new car in any driveway on the block. The aromatic haze from barbecued ribs wafts over rightfield and Cal clubs one more ball into the leftfield seats and just maybe one of these new kids from Rochester or Bowie is the one to take the baton from dear old Rip. As ever, charmed.
Aubrey Huff on his new book and the issues that almost killed him
November 15, 2016 by Roch Kubatko MASN.com
Aubrey Huff hadn’t reached rock bottom during a succession of losing seasons with the Rays and Orioles. He hadn’t touched down through his drug addiction and divorce proceedings. There was only the clawing that hastens a man’s descent.
It wasn’t until Huff retreated to his closet again, dropped to his knees and put a gun to his head that he had truly gotten there.
Orioles manager Buck Showalter often punctuates an amusing anecdote by saying, “It will all be in the book one day.” Huff, the former outfielder, first baseman and world-class jokester, is now an author who’s going public with his pain.
Huff warned me that “Baseball Junkie: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of a World Series Champion” isn’t “a Christian book by any means,” though he later found religion. He says it with a laugh while revealing that more tears flowed as he revisited a period of his life that almost killed him.
The book, written with close friend Stephen Cassar, details how Huff first experimented and became hooked on Adderall while playing for the Orioles. How he drank heavily and tried to hide his depression and anxiety, leading a double life of sorts. How he learned coping skills that bring more relief than any medication.
Putting it all into words has been cathartic. It’s also forced him back into a dark place as he attempts to enlighten his readers.
“I’ve got to be honest with you, even talking about this stuff now, it’s hard to talk about because I’m baring my soul,” Huff said. “As I wrote this book, it was like therapy for me. I can’t tell you how many times I cried. It was unbelievable getting all this down on paper. Even talking about it. But I feel like it’s important to let it all out, to talk about it, not be ashamed of it and acknowledge it. And the more you do, the easier it is and the more it goes away.”
“I was diagnosed with full-on anxiety with the Giants in 2012. I basically jumped ship in New York in midseason at 3 a.m. I woke up in the hotel, went to the bathroom and felt like I was having a heart attack. Never felt this in my life. I had no clue what was going on. My mind starting freaking out. The only thing that came reasonable to me at the time was to pack my bags, so I went to JFK and got in a plane to Tampa, to go home and see my family.
“This entire flight, I’m freaking out. I didn’t know it was a panic attack at the time. I didn’t know what was going on with me. We started to land and I’m calming down, then I realized, ‘What the hell just happened?’ So I called my trainers and they sent me to a therapist and I was diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder and put on Xanax the rest of the 2012 season.”
The Giants won their second World Series in three years, both with Huff on the roster, but he spent most of his time on the bench after rejoining the club, appearing in only 52 games.
“We were celebrating a championship and I didn’t give a (crap),” Huff said. “I didn’t care. Walked away, retired right then and there. Anxiety had chased me into my retirement.”
And straight into a horror that many of us cannot fathom.
“I struggled not only with the transition of baseball to retirement, but anxiety came with it and that led to full-blown depression,” he said. “So I was suffering with daily panic attacks for a year and a half, two years straight, and I would cry myself to sleep at night.”
Huff now lives in San Diego with his wife Baubi and their two sons. The marriage, like the man, was saved. But it was a long road and the distance almost ended his life.
“You’ve got to keep in mind here I’ve made $60-plus million in baseball, I’ve got a beautiful wife, two healthy and happy kids, won two World Series championships. I should be living the high life, right?” he said. “I retired at the age of 36. And I was miserable.
“In October 2014, I was having a panic attack around dinnertime. My wife was cooking, my kids are playing in the pool. I retreated to my closet, grabbed my .357 magnum, got on my knees, put my gun to my head and stared at myself in the full-length mirror, and I almost pulled the trigger. Right then and there, I don’t know why or what happened, I got so pissed off. I was so close to doing it, man. I just thought life would be better without me here. Not only for my wife and kids, but I didn’t want to feel this pain anymore.
“Just this little voice inside me told me to put the gun down. I put it down and right there in the closet I started praying. I prayed to God and from that moment on, I let Him back in my life. I was a kid from Texas. You believe in God, but you never really lived it. Day by day, the last two years, my life has gotten better and better and better and I’ve stopped living that selfish lifestyle I used to live.”
A lifestyle that spun out of control during the 2009 season with the Orioles before they traded him to the Tigers in August. He signed as a free agent in 2007 and hit for the cycle against the Angels, and he won a Silver Slugger Award the following year. But that’s not what he remembers.
“I barely drink anymore,” he said. “I was hopped up ... In 2009, it really started when I was with the Orioles. I drank a lot in my career, which is what most athletes do, but I took my first Adderall pill with Baltimore. We were in Chicago for a day game and I had never felt so free, so loose and so invincible in my life. That day I got hooked on Adderall and I took it from 2009 to 2011, for three years playing baseball. And I was a train wreck, man.
“I was really good on the field and really bad off the field. I was a piece of (crap), actually. I almost lost my marriage, the whole deal. In 2011, my wife had to file for divorce. I decided to completely get off them in 2012. Drugs, alcohol, everything. She took me back and that’s when I had my full-blown panic attack in New York City.
“I’m convinced getting off the Adderall and learning how to deal with life’s pressures is what set me off, and I carried that into my retirement. I just now got to the point where my faith has really helped me out. I’ve spoken to a lot of people, not only the church groups, but kids around the area here about my story and how I was kind of glad I went through the anxiety and depression because it’s turned me into the guy I am today. I’m no longer a douchebag. I like myself actually again.”
Adderall is used for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and requires an exception from Major League Baseball. Huff didn’t wait for it.
“I was a monster,” Huff said. “It turned me into a younger version of myself. I just felt amazing. No aches, no pains. Mentally, I felt invincible. I was on top of my game. But the only way to come down from this drug was to drink yourself silly to pass out every night. I’d wake up and do it all again the next day.
“On the field, I was a great, funny teammate. Off the field, I was a complete (jerk) of a husband and a terrible father. This Adderall stuff is so easy to get and it can really ruin your life if you don’t need it. I understand the need for it if you have ADHD legitimately, but I didn’t. It was just something I took to make me feel good and the minute I got off it, I had to deal with the world’s pressures, the game’s pressures, and it was hard to really do that.
“Once you get on it, I don’t think there’s any turning back when you play. But the only way I could save my family and get my wife and kids back was to get off it. It was a slippery slope for me. I had to get off it and I’m glad I did now.”
Huff first used Adderall without the exception, unafraid of a failed drug test.
“I had never had a slap on the wrist for a drug test,” he said. “You know as well as I do that you get a warning the first time, so I figured what the hell. If I get popped, I get popped. You get a slap on the wrist. I took it and immediately after the game I went to get a TEU (therapeutic exception). It took about two weeks to get it and once I had it, it wasn’t a question of if I could get it, it was how much I wanted. It was not hard at all.
“A lot of the book is how I got the anxiety and depression, and how now I’ve gotten myself ... I’m not going to say out of it because there are times where I feel the anxiety coming on, but I’ve learned the tools to deal with it and make it go away. It does not control my life anymore. That’s what I want people to understand.”
Huff views the Xanax as just another pill to mask his real issues.
“I was a kid growing up in Texas and my father was tragically murdered when I was 6 years old,” Huff said. “My mom never got remarried, so I grew up without a father. I grew up with little to no confidence, kind of an introvert, if you will. I played sports, but I was very shy, never really had a girlfriend in high school, just a very awkward kid. I found through booze in college that it helped me break out of my shell, and I drank from college all the way throughout my big league career. There wasn’t a moment that went by when I wasn’t in the bottle. And in 2009, Adderall came around, so it was a perfect storm.”
The anxiety and depression that followed again tested Baubi’s resiliency, her commitment to their marriage and belief in her husband, but they remained together.
“I think God gave me the strongest woman,” Huff said. “She’s the only woman on this planet who could take what she’s taken. Just some of the things I write about what I did to her is so wrong on so many levels. It’s very hard for her to even relive. She’s read what I wrote in the book and she’s very hurt by a lot of things I’ve done to her. There’s no doubt about that, but we’re faithful followers of God.
“She’s gone through hell and back with me and she’s got one of the strongest hearts, most loving and forgiving hearts out there. I don’t think there’s a woman out there who would still be with me.”
“Baseball Junkie” is now available through an early limited-edition promotion via the Kickstarter campaign. It will be released to the general public through DreamGrinder Press in February 2017.
“We wrote it in the way where it’s the kind of language that I would use,” Huff said. “By no means are we trying to sound smart in this book. The way I speak, it’s got some cursing in it, but it’s a very transparent, open read.
“I think it’s the story of a guy who has everything, right, but material wealth and success in this world will never buy you happiness. I had to find that out the hard way.
“There’s stories in this book where you laugh. I’m very transparent. I talk about my rally-thong in 2010 with the Giants, I talk about walking around naked in front of reporters. It’s very transparent. This isn’t a Christian book by any means, but there is an element of faith in the end and I believe it’s seriously helped me in my transition. It saved my life, to be quite honest with you.
“This isn’t just a baseball book, this is a book mainly about everyday life that people go through. Not just in sports and athletes in general, but millions and millions of people in the world today. The stuff we strive for - the success, the money, the fame, all of it - I’m living proof that none of it means (crap). It’s not going to bring you happiness if you don’t have the right things in front of you.”
Huff views his first season in 2007 as “horrible,” which led me to check his stats. He batted .280/.337/.442 with 34 doubles, five triples, 15 home runs and 72 RBIs. He became the third Oriole to hit for the cycle, with Felix Pie joining the group two years later.
Horrible is too harsh, but it’s a decline compared to previous seasons. However, he won his only Silver Slugger Award and finished 16th in Most Valuable Player voting in the American League the following year after batting .304/.360/.552 with 48 doubles, 32 home runs and 108 RBIs.
“The biggest thing that jumps out to me with my time in Baltimore was the first day I took Adderall. That was the biggest thing,” Huff said.
“The guys were great. I knew every year we came into spring training that we were going to suck. There was no doubt. I knew that we weren’t going to be good. But I loved the guys on the team - (Brian) Roberts, (Jay) Gibbons, (Kevin) Millar, Paul Bako. It was a blast. It was just a good group of guys. Steve Trachsel. We just had a blast. We just weren’t good.”
Neither was Huff’s idea to make a “joke” about the city in November 2007 on a Tampa-based nationally syndicated morning radio show. While appearing in studio with Bubba The Love Sponge, Huff referred to Baltimore as “a horse(crap) town” and further angered ownership and club officials by discussing other racy and sensitive subjects. The Orioles were paying him $20 million on a three-year contract.
“That’s in the book a little bit,” Huff said. “It was when I was going through a really (messed) up time in my life. I was a complete train wreck. I wasn’t at the time doing Adderall yet, but I was drinking my face off darn near every night. I was just living invincibly, like nothing could go wrong. Just really full of myself, arrogant, cocky. I brushed fans off, I was a jerk to the media. I was probably even a jerk to you. I don’t remember. That’s part of the Baltimore horse(crap) thing.
“I look back at that night. That was a shock jock show and it was all meant to be fun. I wasn’t serious. People took it personally and I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ Of course, when you’re inebriated like I was, you make bad decisions and I did there. So, unfortunately my biggest memory there was calling Baltimore a ‘horse(crap) city.’ That’s not a very good memory to have.”
Huff began to mend fences by wearing an “I Heart Baltimore” shirt at FanFest, which was held at Camden Yards.
“Fortunately for me, I said that in the offseason in 2007 after I had a horrible first season with the Orioles and I think 2008 I had the best year of my career, so I kind of hit my way back into forgiveness,” Huff said. “But unfortunately for Baltimore, that was the only good year they saw out of me and then 2009 I was gone.”
In an interesting twist, the Orioles acquired minor league pitcher Brett Jacobson from the Tigers in exchange for Huff and later packaged him with pitcher Jim Hoey to obtain shortstop J.J. Hardy from the Twins. Huff left his mark by leaving.
“Oh, great, because I had no idea who I was traded for. I couldn’t have told you,” Huff said. “I know when I was traded from Tampa to Houston, I was traded for Ben Zobrist, so that’s a pretty big deal.”
Huff is enjoying the Orioles’ rise to prominence after 14 straight losing seasons. They’ve registered five straight non-losing seasons and made the playoffs in 2012, 2014 and 2016.
“It’s been fun to watch these guys,” he said. “I’ve been rooting for them more than any other team in baseball besides the Giants. I want to see them get there. I think the city deserves it. Obviously, you’ve still got (athletic trainers) Richie Bancells and Brian Ebel there that I still love to death. Adam Jones is still there. I’d love to see those guys get a ring.
“What people don’t understand is I lived through it with the Giants. The best team doesn’t always win the World Series. They just don’t. It’s hard enough to get to the playoffs. The first nine years of my career were dead last basically with Tampa and Baltimore. Then, I get to the playoffs my first year with San Francisco and we win the World Series. The only two times I’ve been in the playoffs I’ve won the World Series in 2010 and 2012, so I’m very spoiled in that way. But in both of those years we weren’t the best team. You just don’t know when you get to the playoffs.”
Included in the post-Huff changes is the switch from Fort Lauderdale to Sarasota for spring training.
“You’re soaking in the jet fuel from those jets. Oh, God, it was miserable,” Huff said.
“I tell people all the time I’m glad I did it the way I did. I had six years of losing in Tampa and three years of losing in Baltimore, and then winning at the end with San Francisco and winning in that organization. That’s a first-class, A-plus organization. I couldn’t imagine going to San Francisco my first three years and then going to Tampa and Baltimore.”
Huff actually considered a comeback last winter at 39, but it didn’t materialize. He has no regrets. It never was really about re-engaging in the competition.
“The only reason I wanted to make a comeback was to inspire people about this story,” he said. “I wanted to be able to get it in front of people and use that platform to talk about anxiety-depression. Even if I was a bench player, even if I never played, just to be able to say I came back and use that to inspire people.
“I didn’t get a shot in Mexico and nobody wanted to take a look at me, and I thought, ‘You know what, maybe this isn’t the calling. What if I wrote a book?’ That would save so much time and effort on my part. So I think writing the book is going to be able to get to a lot more people.”