Pat Burrell helped Aubrey Huff escape his shell

Aubrey Huff is part comedian, part prankster and part roast master, lacking the tuxedo but sparing his teammates nothing else. When it comes to the self-styled Huff Daddy, there is no such thing as "too much information."

Here is the most unbelievable thing Huff has uttered as a Giant, though:

"I was a painfully shy kid," he said, stopping as he sensed disbelief. "No, really, I was."

Huff grew up in a trailer park outside of Fort Worth, Texas. He lost his father at a young age and immersed himself in video games and cartoons. He described himself as a gangly, pizza-faced kid in high school who hit just one home run as a junior and senior combined, even though the outfield fence was just 350 feet to dead center. Even as he put on weight in junior college and started hitting deep drives, he portrayed a total lack of confidence.

So who brought him out of his shell?

"That guy," Huff said, pointing across the Giants clubhouse to Pat Burrell, his one-time teammate at the University of Miami.

"When I transferred, the first guy I met was that son of a "..." Huff said. "I hadn't met such an arrogant (jerk) in my life. I couldn't stand him. All he did was rag on me."

You knew Huff's next story about Burrell would be good. He prefaced it by saying, "Awww, I'm sure Pat won't care if I tell this."

"After two weeks at Miami, I wanted to go home," Huff said. "So my mom flies out, trying to convince me to stay. I was living with two seniors, and they ragged me, too. I just didn't understand all this baseball ragging nonsense. She's in my room one night and I'm sitting on my bed and she's telling me to give it another two weeks.

"Anyway, there's a knock on the door, and before I can even get off the bed, Pat comes barging in with a six-pack in his hand, dripping wet, buck naked.

"So I jumped up and shut the door. Coming from Texas, these things didn't happen. I said, 'See what I'm dealing with here, Mom?'

"She just started laughing and said, 'Actually, Aubrey, that's pretty darn funny.'

"I thought, 'My God, if my mom can laugh at this, why can't I?' "

Huff went to practice the next day determined to take Burrell's ribbing and throw it right back at him. He recalled his initial comeback attempts as awkward, but he got better at it.

It was almost as vital a skill as hitting a curveball.

"I really believe that's when I learned to be a ballplayer, man," Huff said. "If I didn't go to Miami, if Pat didn't wear me out, I wouldn't have made it to the big leagues. This is a humbling, challenging game. You have to be mentally tough."

The Giants will need plenty of mental toughness if they hope to overcome their considerable flaws and make the playoffs for the first time since 2003, and the two former Hurricanes have brought a cocky edge to the clubhouse. It doesn't matter that Huff was a panic signing whom nobody else wanted last winter or that Burrell was picked out of the recycling bin after the Tampa Bay Rays released him in May.

Huff is savoring every moment of his first winning season. He flexes his muscles as he saunters out to batting practice, yelling to nobody in particular, "Time for the laser show, boys!"

Back in spring training, he couldn't stop staring at teammate Nate Schierholtz's washboard abs. Finally, he snapped a cell phone picture and sent it to his wife with the message, "Look honey, I've been working out!"

And Burrell, who grew up in the Santa Cruz mountains, has been re-energized by his homecoming. He will receive another today when the Giants begin a series at Philadelphia, where he won a World Series ring in 2008.

"Pat's the guy who tells you what you need to hear, even when you don't want to hear it," Huff said. "He's mentally strong. He went through all the boos in Philly, and when he went back to get his ring, they gave him a standing ovation. It made him tear up after going through all that."

Burrell's pennant-race experience isn't just rubbing off on the Giants' young players. He also is a compass for veterans such as Huff and Freddy Sanchez, who have played for losing teams their whole career.

After a game at Dodger Stadium last month, Burrell and Huff stayed in the clubhouse and talked for almost two hours.

"He was briefing me on it, how it's going to be," Huff said. "He said, 'It's a different animal, bro. You may think you're ready, but you might be shocked. It's the same game, the same teams. You just have to slow it down.' "

But not the banter during batting practice. That's always a rapid-fire session, and pity the target who takes himself too seriously -- Burrell included.

As the details of Huff's story were recited back to him recently, Burrell just closed his eyes and nodded.

"Yeah, that's pretty much how it happened," he said. "I was looking for the shampoo. There wasn't any in the shower. Obviously, I didn't know his mom was in there."

Long pause.

"I don't know how the six-pack got in my hands."



(mercurynews.com)