Huff's a hit

The Orioles' team plane bounced, dipped and rattled while passing through a thunderstorm on its way to Kansas City, Mo., early Thursday morning.

Later that evening, Orioles manager Dave Trembley asked first baseman Aubrey Huff about the experience.

Prepared for a rough flight, Huff said that when he got on board he downed a couple drinks, sufficiently chilled out and then went to sleep.

"Couldn't have told you it was storming," he said with a sly smile.

Welcome to Huff's world, where outside tumult - even occasional self-created chaos - doesn't seem to affect his easygoing attitude.

Criticize him. Call him abrasive, crass or lazy. Boo him at his home park on Opening Day. Do whatever you want.

Huff doesn't care. He's not changing. And, when you least expect it, you'll end up appreciating him.

"He is who he is, no matter who he is around, and I think there is something to be said for that," said Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts, one of Huff's best friends on the team. "He doesn't try to fake it around people or be somebody he is not. He likes to have a good time. He can be very sarcastic. He just enjoys life."

Huff is the Orioles' Everyman, the kid in the back of class who launches clandestine spitballs; the smart-aleck colleague in the neighboring cubicle. Except that he hits baseballs 400-plus feet with regularity.

"He is a real guy, that's what I love about him," said Chris "Chico" Fernandez, the Tampa Bay Rays' video coordinator and Huff's friend for a decade. "You either love him or hate him. I don't think there is an in-between with his antics. I loved him."

For a six-month period, Baltimore hated Huff.

In November 2007, after hitting just 15 homers in the first season of a three-year, $20 million deal, Huff appeared on Bubba the Love Sponge, a risque nationally syndicated radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio and, among other things, called Baltimore a "horses - - town."

Orioles president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail publicly rebuked Huff and fined him a "significant" amount for the incident. The fans were apoplectic, booing him unmercifully for the first part of 2008 despite Huff's apologies, which included wearing an "I Heart Baltimore" T-shirt at the annual Orioles Fanfest celebration at Camden Yards.

"They gave it to me pretty good," Huff said. "It was really meant to be taken as a Howard Stern-kind of knockoff show. It was just a thing to do, and I was trying to have some fun with it. By no means did I mean anything by it."

The boos dissipated as Huff kept hitting throughout 2008. He finished the season with a .304 batting average with 32 homers and 108 RBIs, earning Most Valuable Oriole accolades and a Silver Slugger Award.

"I wasn't wild about the comments at the time," MacPhail said. "But I was impressed with how he took responsibility and how he responded on the field and off.'

MacPhail said he has not talked about a contract extension for Huff, 32, but both sides said they would be open to a new deal once the current one ends this winter.

Huff's popularity in Baltimore soared nine days ago when he hit a three-run homer against the New York Yankees' Joba Chamberlain at Camden Yards. Huff made an emphatic fist pump rounding first base and again at home plate - a direct mocking of Chamberlain's strikeout celebrations.

In Chamberlain's third big league appearance, and first at Yankee Stadium in August 2007, he released an exaggerated fist pump after striking out Huff in the eighth inning of a one-run game. Huff vowed at the time that he would return the theatrics if he homered against the Yankees' right-hander.

"It was pre-ordained," Huff deadpanned. "I was just hoping one day I'd get him."

Orioles fans loved it, praising "Huff Daddy" on Internet message boards. He received text messages from players throughout baseball joking about the gesture. And his teammates couldn't stop chuckling.

"It was one of the greatest things I have ever seen in sports," Orioles closer George Sherrill said. "Nobody likes antics, especially when they are tired, so I thought it was one of the funniest things I have seen on the field."

Huff will face Chamberlain again Thursday in new Yankee Stadium, and he doesn't expect any fallout from his fist pump, with the exception of some Bronx cheers from Yankees fans.

"That fist pump was just like my radio show; it wasn't meant to [tick] anybody off," Huff said. "It was just meant to be funny. That's my personality."

His shtick is to mess with anyone and everyone, often in sophomoric fashion. One of Huff's favorite games is knocking the notebook out of an unsuspecting reporter's hands. He's a 12-year-old boy stuck in a millionaire athlete's existence.

"When you get on an elevator with him and he gets off at his floor first, he'll quick hit all of the buttons, laugh and leave," said Scott Cursi, Tampa Bay's bullpen catcher and Huff's longtime friend.

Then there's Huff's legendary penchant for nudity.

In one of his first days as an Oriole, he sat in the middle of the Fort Lauderdale Stadium clubhouse reading a newspaper in the buff.

Not blessed with a sculpted body, Huff said he uses nudity to his advantage.

"I like shock value. I like messing with people," he said. "If I don't feel like doing an interview that day, I'll just get buck naked and most [reporters] won't come up to me."

This spring, he made a point of loudly comparing his body to minor league pitcher Jake Arrieta's muscled frame, playfully reminding Arrieta who was in the majors. No one is exempt from Huff's teasing, including himself. When he received his Silver Slugger in April, Huff, not known for his defensive prowess, held the trophy above his head and said, "Next up, Gold Glove."

For all his joking, though, he takes his job seriously.

"He is amusing. He keeps things in perspective," Orioles manager Dave Trembley said. "But I don't think I have had any guy any more competitive than he is when he is standing in that batter's box. He is all business when he is in that box."

When the game is over, however, so is that intensity. He's back to being the goofy, small-town Texas kid who travels imperviously through the storms around him.

"As soon as I leave this field every day," he said, "it's back to life as normal for me."

(baltimoresun.com)