Jay Gibbons

Red Zone

Yet for Oriole right fielder Jay Gibbons, the time is now. Both in baseball and his personal life, 2006 is an important year of transition.

Gibbons arrived at his first Orioles' spring training in 2001 as a fresh-faced, 24-year-old Popeye look-alike. His bulging biceps burst out of his uniform bread popping out of a toaster. As a Rule 5 draftee from the Toronto Blue Jays' farm system, Gibbons had to remain on Baltimore's big league roster all season or be offered back to the Blue Jays. Most Rule 5 draftees don't last a full season with their new teams. Gibbons was the exception. He not only stayed that one year; he's never left yet. In fact, today he ranks second in seniority on the Orioles, behind only Melvin Mora.

Gibbons was pretty much an unknown quantity when he came to the Orioles, other than having the reputation of being an avid weight-lifter who'd hit well in the low minors but seemed out of place with a mitt on his hand.

Over the ensuing five years, the California native realized that bigger muscles didn't readily translate into more hits or home runs. He toned himself downward to gain more athletic agility and began putting up some solid big league numbers. He was held back by a steady stream of injuries the past couple of seasons. People kept wondering when-and if-Gibbons would finally emerge as a player who could be counted on by his teammates to produce consistently at the plate and cover his position in the field, if not in the class of a Willie Mays, at least efficiently.

Now is that time. Gibbons occupies an important niche in the Oriole offense, batting either in the clean-up or number-five slot, behind Miguel Tejada. Hard work has turned him into a decent right fielder with an above-average throwing arm.

He's not a kid anymore.

Instead of needing to go regularly to older players for advice, he now can offer younger players tips on what it takes to be a productive big league player.

And Gibbons no longer has to prove himself anymore. He belongs. He's an everyday fixture in manager Sam Perlozzo's lineup, regardless of who is pitching against the Orioles.

"He's a much more mature hitter," says Perlozzo, who has been with the Orioles the entire time Gibbons has been on the team. "What we saw earlier in his career was that he would get himself out a lot. Now, he doesn't do that so much. Pitchers have to work to get him out."

Gibbons agrees that he has a much better comfort level at the plate now that he is in his sixth year in the league. But it still doesn't always come easy. "I still struggle," he says of his attempts to hit a baseball, "but then I remember how different the struggles were as I was coming up."

Oriole front office officials realized that they wanted Gibbons to be an integral part of their team, not just this season, but for the long haul. So, on Jan. 25, they signed the red head to a four-year, $21.1 million contract.

"I was in shock," Gibbons says of the deal offered by the Orioles. The shock was a pleasant one. Gibbons had told his agents, brothers Sam and Seth Levinson, that he wanted to remain with the Orioles as long as he could. The four-year deal was something that he hadn't really expected. Now he believes it helps give him a sense of purpose and constancy.

"It's tough playing year-to-year," he says, not knowing whether you might be moving to another city to play baseball. And because he could have become a free agent after the 2006 season, he realized that if he hadn't signed with the Orioles over the winter, he could end up with any of the 30 major league teams next year.

Gibbons has proven that he has the talent and discipline to be a strong major league hitter. He's on pace to hit close to 40 home runs this season. He's kept his average within swatting distance of .300. He makes opposing teams think twice about walking Tejada to get to him. Yet Gibbons knows he can still be better. "I'm not disappointed with my career at all," he says. "But I think I can go up another level. I'm still at times that rookie that likes to swing at everything. But I still can be better. I don't set specific goals. I just tell myself every year to be a little more consistent and a little more patient, and the numbers will come."

It was very heartening for him when he agreed to the team's contract offer that Orioles' vice president of baseball operations Jim Duquette, told Gibbons that Perlozzo had wanted to sign him to a long-term deal and keep him in Baltimore for the foreseeable future. That demonstrated to Gibbons that the Orioles had confidence in him.

"The contract gains me stability," he says. "It's a transition."

But the contract signing with the Orioles wasn't the only event that week in late January that gave Gibbons a sense of stability.

Three days after the ink had dried and certified that Gibbons would be in Baltimore for the next four years, he was in southern California getting married.

The Oriole first baseman and Laura Giuliani, a San Francisco lawyer, tied the knot at The Lodge at Rancho Mirage before 250 guests, including his best friend on the Orioles, Brian Roberts, who served as groomsman.

His marriage, he believes, is good for his baseball career. It has given him a sense of serenity. "It relaxes me," he explains. "Everything's kind of settled for me now outside of baseball. It's a nice routine. I don't know how I pulled that one off, but I definitely married up."

Gibbons and Laura had known each other in high school in Lakewood, Ca. When Gibbons was a senior, his best friend dated a good friend of hers. But the two of them didn't begin going out together until about seven years later, after their careers had begun.

Following high school graduation, Jay went to Cal State-Los Angeles, where he made the all-conference and all-region teams three years, and then signed a professional baseball contract. Laura traveled eastward to the Univeristy of Notre Dame and then returned West to George Law School in San Francisco. In 2003 their old friends in high school who had been dating got married. About that time Jay and Laura began seeing one another.

They'd spend time together in the offseason and when the Orioles played in the Bay area.

Eventually they decided to spend more than just winters and occasional road trips together.

When they were married this January, Jay and Laura realized how fortunate they have been in their careers to be making the kind of money they do at such a relatively young age. So, instead of accepting gifts, they asked their wedding guests to make donations to From One Family to Another, a Maryland-based nonprofit organization that assists individuals with spinal cord injuries. Both of them know people who have been afflicted with spinal cord injuries.

"We're so fortunate and so blessed," says Laura, "that we knew we wanted to pick a charity in lieu of getting gifts." The money donated through them to From One Family to Another is close to $4,000 and doubles the amount the organization has received from any previous fund raising event.

While Gibbons is trying to hit balls over the scoreboard and onto the right field flag court in Camden Yards this summer, his new wife will be studying for the Maryland bar exam, which she will take in July.

When she practiced in San Francisco, Laura represented companies in cases brought against them by their employees. Ironically, Jay is the Orioles' player representative and thus is on the opposite side of the employee/employer fence. It's a position that previously had been held by players like Mike Mussina and B. J. Surhoff and is another sign of the status Gibbons holds on the Orioles today at the age of 29.

He says he and his wife never really discussed their opposing perspectives when it comes to employment law. And Laura says when she begins practicing in Baltimore, she hopes to move into civil rights law, defending individuals in gender and disability cases.

The two Californians have bought a house in Owings Mills, north of Baltimore, further solidifying their ties to the community.

Laura attends almost every home Oriole game and also sometimes travels with Jay on road trips. She says she is proud of her husband and the way he is active in community affairs and makes an effort to sign autographs as frequently as he can.

Yet she also explains that despite his status as a major league player, he is basically a quiet person who shies away from the celebrity status he receives. When the Orioles were playing in Boston this spring, Gibbons and his wife went to dinner one night with teammate Kevin Millar and Red Sox star David Ortiz. The object of tremendous public adulation in Boston, Ortiz finds it difficult to avoid being besieged by fans wherever he goes. Gibbons, says his wife, is relatively shy and doesn't enjoy such idolization. "He'd rather crawl under a rock," she says.

But that's not going to be easy for her husband, now that he has established himself in Baltimore and hopes to help turn the team's fortunes around as one of its clubhouse leaders.

Gibbons has never been on a winning team in the major leagues. He joined the Orioles three years into their string of eight consecutive losing seasons, now going on nine. Losing, he says, takes a mental toll on a player. "You feel you're part of the reason you're not winning," he concedes. "We're here to win."

He hopes the winning will come sooner rather than later. Yet Gibbons is now assured of being part of the Orioles' future as well as its present.

And his longevity with the team is something that means a lot to him. "It's nice," he says. "It means you've outlasted a lot of people."