B.J. Surhoff Gets His Due

He's having the best offensive season of his career. On defense, he is arguably the best left fielder in the American League. He's emerged as a leader in a veteran clubhouse populated with many great ballplayers. He's become one of the most popular players in Baltimore, perhaps second to only Cal Ripken. He tops the majors in consecutive games played. He made the AL All-Star team for the first time in his 13-year big league career.

Yet talk to B.J. Surhoff about it all, and it's no big deal. Everybody in Baltimore might be cheering his feats and singing his praises, yet Surhoff, 35, is reluctant to join the chorus.

“I don't really know,” Surhoff responds when asked if he considers this his best year ever. “Obviously the numbers are better than any of the other years. But wins--how the team is playing--has more to do with having a good year. It's not nearly as enjoyable with the team not winning.”

Despite Surhoff's reluctance to exult over his season, the numbers do the shouting for him. He is hitting .324, the highest average of his career. His 24th home run on August 22 means he already has at least two more than during any year in his career. His 90th RBI on the same day brings him to within two of his all-time high, and his 80th run scored ties his career best, with almost 40 games left in the season. He is second to Derek Jeter in the American League in hits and multi-hit games and fifth in total bases.

“There's been a progression in my career, after my third year, from 1990 on,” Surhoff finally concedes. I got into some better work habits, improving what I had to do and having the confidence to implement it.”

Well, B. J., what about your defense? You're third in the league in outfield assists, you are the league's only everyday outfielder without an error, and you patrol left field as skillfully as Elliott Ness hunted down Al Capone. “I feel good about my outfield defense,” he acknowledges after being prompted. “I go over in my head ways to get better, in throwing to the bases and in cutting balls off. That's what you have to work on in your head--ways to improve, how you can always get better.”

And what about your consecutive games streak? You're the new Cal Ripken, leading the major leagues while approaching 300 games without sitting one out. “It means nothing to me,” Surhoff retorts. “What it means is that my health has been good and my performance is good enough for me to be in the lineup every day.”

Manager Ray Miller, though, knows that Surhoff's ability to play two years in a row without missing a game (if he plays every remaining game this season) will be no small feat. He attributes it to Surhoff's incredible doggedness and penchant for playing as hard as humanly possible, as well as to his great conditioning.

“B.J. would play hard if he had a bone hanging out of his neck,” says Miller. “He's been unbelievably durable and strong. With guys like that, you just respect the fact that they play so hard and perform so well. You just write their names in the lineup every day.”

Surhoff, in his fourth year with the Orioles after spending the first nine years in Milwaukee, has quietly and probably unconsciously become a leader on the team, if not the leader.

He went to Cuba with owner Peter Angelos on behalf of the players to help arrange the pre-season exhibition there this spring and carried the American flag to lead his teammates onto the field. Surhoff attributes it all to happenstance, saying he just had been talking to Angelos, who invited him to Cuba on the initial scouting trip, and that everything progressed from there. But Surhoff also was the player the media turned to when there was controversy over whether the Orioles would play an exhibition game in Rochester this year. In that sense, he often is recognized as the de facto clubhouse leader.

So what do you think of your ascendancy as clubhouse leader, B.J.? “I don't consider it,” he says. “You don't know how other guys feel about you. I feel very comfortable in this clubhouse.”

Miller says Surhoff's quiet rise to leadership came about, “maybe because Cal's been down a little bit. And a lot of it has to do with being up in the order and leading the league in a lot of things. Players have a tendency to be a little more vocal when they're having a big year.”

One issue that Surhoff does not hesitate to say he feels good about is the way fans respond to him at Camden Yards. He clearly has become a favorite. “I'm very appreciative of that,” he says. “I think it has a lot to do with the first half [of the season] I had, and I was coming off three pretty good years.”

Certainly, he generates a tremendous amount of fan appreciation because of his consistent and superlative performance this season. Only twice all year has he gone as many as three games without a hit, while at the same time he has five hitting streaks of eight games or more. Yet Surhoff also generates admiration among fans because he is seen as one of the few players on the team who gives 100 percent every moment he is on the field. He also is one of only three Orioles (along with Mike Bordick and Ripken) who lives in the area year-round, a fact that many Baltimoreans appreciate. Moreover, his intensity and emotional style of play, as well as his lack of glitz and ego, mesh well with the Baltimore ethos. “That's one of the reasons I came here,” Surhoff says. “I thought it would be a good fit.”

In conceding that he's having at least a good year on the field, Surhoff says much of his performance stems from a sense of confidence in his abilities. “Confidence is very important in anything you do, not just baseball,” the former University of North Carolina star maintains. “If you don't have self-confidence, you're not going to be able to play this game. Some guys have it, and some guys don't have it. There are guys that overachieve, and some guys don't achieve as much as they could.”

The same rule, he says, holds true for teams.

“Confidence is really the difference between good teams and all the others,” he suggests. “Individually all the guys [in the Orioles' clubhouse] have a lot of confidence.”

But why, then, are the Orioles struggling so as a team?

“Good teams that are playing well know they're going to win--or at least think they're going to win--every time they go out there. When you're not a good team, you're just hoping you're going to win.”

While he doesn't know why the Orioles lack team confidence, Surhoff believes their poor early start might have contributed to the problem. “Success has a lot to do with confidence,” he explains. “This team hasn't had success. And we got off to a very sluggish start.”

But one player who does have confidence, and who hasn't been sluggish at all this season, is Surhoff himself. “My confidence is fine,” he says. “When you play long enough, you know how to draw upon the good times.” And when you're struggling, he adds, you use that grasp of the good days to get you through the tough ones.

A year ago, Surhoff seemed to tire late in the season, batting only .208 in August before rebounding in the final month.

Is he concerned that his body will run down this season, especially since he has not missed a day in over two years?

“You get tired at different points throughout the season, not just the end,” he relates. “Everybody gets tired. You get physically tired, and you get mentally tired. You get worn down. But you try and draw upon doing what you need to do to get ready and take care of yourself so that you see the signs of getting tired before it comes. Then, when you get tired, you are prepared for it.”

Surhoff, then, must have prepared himself well, because he has shown little sign of wearing down this season. He has been one of the few bright spots for the Orioles all year, a genuine All-Star and team leader. It's pretty obvious to anyone who's followed the team this season that he has been the Orioles' most valuable player. To anyone, that is, whose last name is not Surhoff.