Blast From The Past: Hometown Hero B.J. Surhoff Returns To Changed Oriole Landscape

Remember all those before-and-after ads? The ones where a dumpy, 300-pound colossus—sometimes male, sometimes female—suddenly is transmnsmogrified into a svelte playboy or a sylph-like bathing beauty? Or a balding, middle-aged man turns into a genuine Romeo with a full head of wavy, dark hair?

Well, those dramatic changes are no more startling than the difference between the Orioles baseball organization that greeted B.J. Surhoff when he rejoined the club this year, and the one he played for in the mid-1990s.

Gone are such stars as Cal Ripken, Rafael Palmeiro, Mike Mussina, Brady Anderson, Roberto Alomar and Bobby Bonilla. In their place are a bunch of far younger and greener athletes, many of whom are as close in age to Surhoff's sons as they are to him.

Gone are the general managers and managers who led the team during the outfielder's first incarnation as a Baltimore Oriole.

Gone, sadly, is the hope that the team will be fighting for the playoffs when the waning summer shadows lengthen over Camden Yards during the final days of the pennant stretch.

And gone are the crowds that jam-packed Camden Yards day after day when Surhoff and his former Orioles teammates were leading the team to the American League Championship Series in '96 and '97.

The only similarity that remains, really, is the affection Baltimore fans have for Surhoff. In fact, it is likely more intense today than it was when he last played for the Orioles in the summer of 2000. When the Orioles were introduced on Opening Day this season, Surhoff easily received the largest ovation of any player.

He is a reminder of the past days of glory for the Orioles, when the team was revered and no one could get too much of them.

Surhoff always was popular in Baltimore, primarily for his hard-nosed intensity on the field and the fact that he was one of the few contemporary Orioles to choose to move to Baltimore and make his permanent home there. But he forever endeared himself to the city and its sports fans on July 31, 2000, when he held a tearful press conference upon learning that he had been dealt to the Atlanta Braves just moments before Major League Baseball's trading deadline arrived. Many Baltimore athletes have earned their way into the hearts of the city's fans and citizenry by hitting scads of home runs, throwing or catching long and numerous touchdown passes, and picking up hundreds of victories on the pitching mound. But Surhoff is the only one who has broken down and cried publicly upon hearing that he was traded from Baltimore to another city.

The public's obvious affection for Surhoff, for his play on the field and his devotion to the city of Baltimore, has touched him, especially the greeting he received on Opening Day.

“There was some anticipation to see what the reception would be like, and obviously it was as good or better than I could have asked for,” says Surhoff. Some of the fans' support for him, Surhoff acknowledges, probably stems from his tearful disappointment at being traded to the Braves three years ago. And some, he adds, “hopefully from having played pretty well while I was here.”

Also, he recognizes that Opening Day was the first time he had played at Camden Yards since the trade. “It wasn't personally how I played, the greatest day, but it was a good day,” he says of his reception the day he returned to Camden Yards.

The players that Surhoff now sees as he looks around the Orioles clubhouse are often virtual strangers to him. And because many of them are far younger than he is, it has taken a little getting used to, especially since so many of his friends from his Orioles' past are gone.

“Anytime things change, it makes things a little different,” the former University of North Carolina star admits. “Things changed here. In '98 there was some change, '99 some more changes, and obviously 2000 was the big c hange—around the trading deadline. It's a dramatic change frrom when I was here the last time. Most of the faces are new in the last two years, really. I think the expectations are different now, in terms of as a group or from the fans and all the way on up. But that doesn't mean they have to change here individually. Locker rooms are still locker rooms, although each one has its own dynamic. It's a lot different place from when I was here last time. There were many more of my contemporaries in here, guys I had played either with or against. Now there are more unknowns. If you look at guys we had in the past, a number of them were All-Stars and are going to have a chance to be in the Hall of Fame. Now more of the players are guys trying to establish themselves in the big leagues. There are still some good players here that are veterans who have been around a little while. It's not so much a young team as it is basically an inexperienced team.

”There's a different comfort level. When you play with people for a while, you start to build up relationships and trust that come about from being around people and sharing common interests. Now, aside from when you're on the field, you have some generational type gaps. What I'm doing and my life off the field are probably a lot different from what a lot of these guys are doing. I'm a lot further along the road with that type thing. Our priorities are probably a little different. But when it's time to play, everyone should be on the same page. That's really no different from some places. But I'm a decade or so older than some of the guys, and there are just differences, in how you grow up and what your interests are. That's just the way it is.” For a while, Surhoff did not even know he would be a major leaguer this year. Surhoff had four full and productive years as an Oriole during which he had a minimum of 528 at-bats; he was well on his way to a fifth when traded. But he fell on tough times with the Braves.

He pulled a hamstring on September 7, 2000, shortly after ending what at the time was the major leagues' longest consecutive games streak (445), and was limited to 11 pinch-hitting appearances the rest of the season.

Then, in 2001, Surhoff hit .271—his lowest average in almost a decadde. He played in 141 games, though, and was looking forward to a strong 2002 season in Atlanta when he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee on April 27. He underwent surgery, and that was the end of Surhoff's 2002 baseball season.

That made for an odd and unsettling summer for Surhoff last year. He occasionally visited the Braves, traveled with the team and went to the playoffs (as a spectator), but most of the time was spent in Baltimore rehabbing his knee. On one hand it was horribly frustrating for a man who has played professional baseball every summer since 1985.

On the other hand, it gave him a chance to be a fulltime father and husband during months that he usually was away for long stretches of time—eiither in other cities or at the ballpark at Camden Yards.

“I rehabbed, but I also took some time to enjoy some of the things I hadn't done in 20-some years,” Surhoff says. “I was able to do some things with my kids and actually take a summer vacation. We did little things here and there and went to the beach. So I tried to take advantage of that while at the same time keeping my eyes set down the road for the following year, trying to make sure I could get back to where I needed to be. I was able to get involved in my kids activities and be a parent on an everyday basis. Part of me liked that, but I also knew I still wanted to play. I tried to make it back for the playoffs last year, but that just didn't work out.”

For a while, Surhoff didn't know if he would be able to continue his big league career because of the knee injury.

“There's always a question when you have an injury of that nature,” he explains. “But once I got the diagnosis and I got it fixed, I was steadfast in my determination that I was going to play again.”

If he didn't harbor that determination and his strong desire to continue as a major leaguer, he says, he wouldn't even have undergone the surgery. And there were times, he admits, he had his doubts.

“I'm happy to be playing again this year,” he says. “You start to wonder, at some point, if you're going to play. But I am glad to be playing, and obviously, it may be better for me coming back here.”

The Braves, who were undergoing a rebuilding campaign last winter, decided not to re-sign a ballplayer who would be 38 this year and had undergone major knee surgery. Surhoff then knew that he wanted to return to Baltimore.

”I've lived here since '96,” he says in explaining why Baltimore was his choice. “We decided to keep this as our home. I fully anticipated [never leaving]. But that being said, we decided to keep our home here. The kids are pretty well entrenched into their lives here and into the community and into what we do. I arguably had my best years here and some good times here. We played in two League Championship Series. Even though we didn't play very well in the LCSs, we had very good teams and some very good players. It was kind of a high water mark over the last number of years for the organization. Fans came out in droves. You couldn't get a ticket. It was a great place to play. And I still think it's a great place to play.”

Surhoff, who works as hard as any Oriole has over the last decade to get himself in shape, became a little frustrated over how long it took to reach a deal with the Orioles.

Finally, on February 12, he signed a minor league contract and was invited to spring training camp in Fort Lauderdale. But he knew that was a mere formality: If the Orioles saw that his knee was okay, he was on the big league roster.

“I knew if I was healthy,” he says, “I was going to be on the team. That was the plan going into spring training. I didn't come for a tryout. That's not why I was here. They signed me here with the intent of bringing me here to play, as long as everything was fine with my knee.”

His knee seems to be holding up just fine, although it is not yet pain-free. “It's holding up fine, but it gets sore,” he says. “Anytime you're getting off some injury like this, it's not going to be all of a sudden you're healthy and it goes away. It's an ongoing process to try and continue to keep it strong and to stay out on the field. From one night to the next, there's really no time to recover. Part of playing in this league is learning how to play from day to day to day to day to day when you don't feel great.”

Surhoff is back again in left field for the Orioles, and he's once more displaying the intensity that made him one of the Orioles' most beloved and best players (he was the team's MVP in 1999 and made the AL All-Star squad that year for the first time in his career) his first time around in Baltimore.

He now hopes he can continue that type of performance, and earn that same respect and admiration, again this year.