Tejada

O’s Vocal Leader’s Enthusiasm Is Contagious

Miguel Tejada strides into the slightly claustrophobic confines of the visiting clubhouse at Fenway Park in Boston. He is wearing a pale blue, short-sleeved dress shirt with its tails flapping out of his jeans—the sartorial style de riguer for Oriole players this season. Tejada stops to look at the lineup posted on the left near the entrance to the locker room and sees his name listed as the No. 3 hitter on manager Lee Mazzilli’s card for that evening’s game.

“I’m in the lineup,” Tejada yells out with glee.

It’s a joke, of course. Tejada always is in the lineup. Three and one-half hours later, in fact, Tejada would be starting at shortstop in his 806th consecutive game, easily the longest current consecutive-games streak in the big leagues. To imagine his name not in the lineup—well, that would be frightening.

But in another sense, Tejada’s enthusiasm at seeing his name on the day’s card probably is not fatuous. The Oriole shortstop is genuinely excited about virtually everything he does at the ballpark.

He looks at the rest of the names in the batting order this afternoon in Boston. “Jay Gibbons,” he shouts out, to no one in particular. “That’s good!” He then notices that catcher Geronimo Gil is among the bench players. “Why not Gil?” asks Tejada, again not really addressing himself to anyone, although he does look over at the somber-faced Gil, who barely notices that his name has been mentioned.

Tejada is a fission of energy, sending nuclei ricocheting all over and around his Oriole teammates. In the dugout he is the one always on the top step or clinging to the protective fence shouting encouragement, leading the high-fives when a player has scored, cajoling his comrades to begin a rally or bounce back from a deficit. On the field he is constantly chattering and flapping about. He runs to the mound to look his pitcher in the eyes and egg him to give a little bit more. Or he lopes over to a fielder to slap him on the butt to congratulate him for a nice play.

He screams in support of players who stand in the batter’s box, urging them to hang in when the count is against them, to keep their focus and to help the team win. He talks as much and as consistently as he drives baseballs through outfield gaps and against and over walls in big league parks across America. Miguel Tejada has few peers when it comes to hitting a baseball or infusing spirit into his teammates.

He’s always been that way, ever since he first walked onto a baseball field as a kid in the Dominican Republic. Tejada began playing youth baseball as a catcher. One day his team’s shortstop didn’t show up. There was another catcher on the roster, but no other shortstop, so his manager asked Tejada to fill in. But he still had the mentality of being behind the plate. So when the first groundball was hit to him, he tried to field it like a catcher. “The ball hit me right in the eye,” he recalls. But late in that same game, he made two big plays at short and he fell in love with the position. He’s been there ever since. Back in the Oriole clubhouse in Boston on this Memorial Day afternoon, Tejada walks over to his locker, which is in a special section of the room, awarded with extra space on the basis of star and veteran status to Tejada, Sammy Sosa, B.J. Surhoff, and Melvin Mora.

Surhoff, the hardest worker on a club of diligent and highly committed athletes, is stretching on the floor with a large “stability” ball to strengthen and stabilize his abdominal and back muscles. Tejada stops by to joke with the outfielder, even as Surhoff is grimacing through the rigors of his workout.

“I want to make all my friends happy,” Tejada later explains. “And I do it with my kids, too. When they are crying, I want to make them happy. I tell them a joke. I do the same with players and pitchers in the game.”

Tejada is not only the best player the Orioles have. He also is the de facto team captain and biggest cheerleader. In just a year-and-one-half in Baltimore, he almost single-handedly has transformed the club from a despondent and uptight group of ballplayers who never really expected to win to an animated and enthusiastic gaggle of athletes who are loose, confident and at ease with themselves.

“He’s so alive, he’s so into it, he’s so enthusiastic,” says first baseman Rafael Palmeiro, a veteran of two decades in major league locker rooms and dugouts. “He picks up the whole team.”

“He comes out and talks to me and jokes,” says pitcher Sidney Ponson. “He keeps everybody loose, and the looser we are, the better we play.”

It has been almost four decades since the Orioles have had a player arrive in Baltimore and so positively impact the club, both on the field and in the clubhouse. The Orioles had become a decent team in 1964 and 1965, but they became a great one in 1966 when Frank Robinson was acquired from Cincinnati. Robinson won the American League triple crown in 1966, but his dominance in the clubhouse as a leader and purveyor of winning baseball also played a vital role in helping the Orioles win their first world championship that year. Tejada, like Robinson, has brought both an extraordinary bat and a winning attitude to Baltimore. Whether he can lead the surprising O’s to the playoffs remains to be seen. But regardless of where they finish this year, Tejada’s upbeat attitude is irrepressible.

“He’s very enthusiastic and positive, and that’s something we hadn’t had in 20 years,” says coach Elrod Hendricks, who has been wearing an Oriole uniform for most of the past 40 years. “He’s always energetic out there on the field, and it moves on to other players. And he’s funny.”

Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken had both been leaders in the Oriole clubhouse during their long reigns in Baltimore. But they led mostly through example, not by verbally trying to rally their teammates to reach farther, to strive for great excellence, as Robinson once did and as Tejada does now.

“I think we always had good leadership before, but it was quiet leadership,” observes Ponson, who has been an Oriole for eight years. “Tejada talks and gabs out there every day. He plays hard, and others have adapted.”

It is no coincidence, his teammates say, that a number of Orioles have picked up their play significantly since Tejada signed a six-year contract with Baltimore prior to the 2004 season.

“You can just look at the guys who play around him every day and see what he’s done for them, people like B-Rob [Brian Roberts] and Melvin [Mora],” says the Orioles’ ace closer, B. J. Ryan. “He’s a very great guy to have out there. He does so much for everybody with him on the field, and that’s what makes him such a great player.”

Mora was the American League’s second best hitter in 2004, setting a team record with a .340 average, and Roberts has led the league in hitting through much of this season.

“He keeps everybody alive,” says Mora. “He keeps everybody happy. When we’re losing, 5-0 or 7-0, he keeps us focused. When I hit a foul pop-up, he’ll tell me, ‘Don’t worry about it, you’ve got three more chances.’” Of course Tejada doesn’t lead merely by cheerleading. He also leads with his magnificent bat. If the season were to end today, he almost certainly would be the American League’s Most Valuable Player, an award he won previously with the Oakland Athletics in 2002. In 2004, his first season with the Orioles, he led the American league in RBIs with 150—an alll-time Oriole record. On top of that, he batted .311 with 34 home runs. This year, through 59 games, he was on pace to bat .328 with 49 home runs and 137 RBIs and ranked second in the league in home runs, RBIs, and slugging percentage; fourth in batting average; and first doubles and extra base hits.

At the age of 28, with a contract that will keep him an Oriole through at least 2010, he is the cornerstone of a franchise that had floundered badly prior to his arrival in Baltimore. Tejada has a chance not only of emulating Robinson by making the Orioles a winning team, but also of being the best player in club history.

He has taken well to being a Baltimore Oriole. He is one of the most proactive players on the team in giving out autographs and enjoys living in downtown Baltimore with his wife, Alesandra—whom he met on the beach as a teenager—daughter, Alexa, 5, and son, Miguel, 4. Their pictures hang on his locker at Camden Yards, and he enjoys nothing better than hanging out with his immediate family and his relatives from the Dominican Republic. Some of his 11 siblings visit Baltimore during the baseball season, as does his father. Tejeda’s mother died when he was a child. He believes in God and makes a gesture to the heavens after hitting a home run, yet Tejada doesn’t consider himself to be a religious person. He likes to go with his family to eat at Morton’s Steak House and Babalu Grill in downtown Baltimore or take in a film at the Arundel Mills Mall.

But most of all, he likes to play baseball and wants to lead his team to victory.

“My goal is to make this team make it to the playoffs,” says Tejada. “That would make me real proud. I’d take that more than anything.”