Colorful Bird: A Look Into the Idiosyncratic World of David Segui

David Segui is a walking conversation piece. Most proud fathers pull out their wallet to show you pictures of their kids. Segui rolls up his sleeves to reveal tattoos of nine-year-old Cory on his left arm and six-year-old Haley on the right. “I'd like to put something on my forearms,” the Orioles' first baseman says, “but I don't know what to get on there since I've run out of kids.”

At this point Segui will stick out his tongue to prove it is pierced with a stud. Welcome to David Segui's World, where nothing is ever quite ordinary, anger can be a positive thing and being completely different somehow seems perfectly normal. As laid back off the field as he is intense on it, Segui is an enigma with fingernails painted black, at once down-to-earth while simultaneously possessing the quirks of a grunge band.

“I've always had the wild side,” says Segui, who painted his nails to match Cory's. “It took me awhile to be comfortable around people. It's fun, kind of making a mockery of taking things too seriously, to kind of shock people who get a little too uptight about silly stuff.”

Come game time, Segui's personality morphs into a bundle of emotion, a man that seems mad at the world, the umpire, his bat, etc.

“For some reason, being angry is the way I motivate myself,” Segui says of his on-field demeanor. “I don't know why.”

That intensity dates back to his Little League days and earned him the nickname “Hardhead” from his mother, a moniker that's engraved on the barrel of his custom-made Old Hickory bats. Segui jokes that “You can ask any of my ex-girlfriends and they'll probably tell you the same thing: I think things through and if I know I'm right, there's nobody that can convince me I'm wrong.”

“He's one of the most intense competitors, funniest competitors,” observes friend and former teammate Alex Rodriguez. “He's a 'game-on' type of a guy. That's a guy who you want to go to war with every day. It's really fun and exciting playing with a guy like David.”

Segui's competitiveness extended all the way to the hair salon while he was playing with Rodriguez in Seattle and the two agreed to bleach their hair as a slump buster.

“Something stupid to do,” remembers Segui, who on this day is bleached blonde. “So he didn't show up, but I did and I've followed through with it ever since. It's been kind of a trademark for me. Kids in Seattle started doing it.”

“He wanted me to do it and I just couldn't do it,” says A-Rod. “I told him my Mom would kill me if I did that.”

As a five-year-old, Segui's uncle taught him and his two brothers to switch-hit. Segui's siblings quickly gave up, but the natural right-hander was determined to learn to hit left-handed as well.

“It was a challenge,” the 34-year-old recalls. “I'm one of those stubborn kind of people that if it's hard, if there's a challenge, then it turns into a mental game and I want to beat it.”

Segui parlayed those early lessons into a major league career in which he began as a spray-hitting defensive specialist and blossomed into a heart-of-the-order presence. The life of a switch-hitter, according to Segui, is a constant challenge, fraught with the grind of keeping two swings in order and rare moments of complete satisfaction.

“What's weird about switch-hitting is you're never hitting good on both sides at the same time,” he explains. “You never feel locked in on both sides. It'll turn from day to day. You'll feel great from one side and the next day you'll feel great from the other side. You can't figure it out. “It's frustrating, as much work as everybody else has, you have twice as much. You have two totally different swings to maintain.”

Segui's outlandish appearance is not the only thing that sets him apart; he has some notions that seem crazy in professional sports. For instance, he claims that his current four-year contract will be his last, regardless of how much money is offered. That's an outgrowth of his own childhood, when his father, big league pitcher Diego, was often absent. Not only was the elder Segui away during the major league season, but he also played winter ball every year until his son was in college.

“I just want to be home with my kids,” says Segui, who lists culinary school and hairdresser as potential post-baseball diversions. “I've missed enough time watching them grow up as it is. A definite influence was not having my dad at home. Baseball took him away. He was never home. We knew he had to do it for the financial reasons, to make ends meet, to feed us. So it didn't bother us that much. It would have been nice to have him home. Financially, another year or two of paychecks isn't going to make a difference to me.” Sitting in front of his locker painting his fingernails before a game, Segui muses about some of his peculiar traits, making light of what people perceive as “normal.”

“It doesn't matter what color your hair is or if you have pierced this or pierced that,” he says. “Those people are interesting to me. You find those people are actually more grounded and normal than the guy in the suit and tie. They're more real, that's for sure. Some phony guy in a suit and tie goes home and his wife dresses him up like Little Bo Peep. Those are the ones I worry about.”

Then he's off to the batting cage.

Asked to explain how he can immediately pull on his batting gloves on with wet nails, he replies: “I got quick dry.”