If a teammate made a mistake behind him, he cursed into his glove or threw his arms out in exasperation.
"They all wrote him off," recalled his stepfather, Mitch Patton. "Said he was uncoachable."
His pitching drew scouts to Northeast, but a few things scared them.
For one, his fastball lacked major league sizzle. Then there was his weight -- 250 pounds on a 6-1 frame.
"He was fat," said his little sister, Jordan. "It looked like he had a package of hot dogs shoved in the back of his neck."
"Usually, when you go to a game, you can pick out the one you're there to see pretty quickly," said Dean Albany, who scouted both pitchers for the Orioles. "With that team, you could look at all the players and have no idea which one was Chorye Spoone."
Spoone was named to the All-Anne Arundel County team as a senior but wasn't drafted. He moved on to junior college at CCBC-Catonsville.
There, you didn't play for coach Dan Blue unless you could run two miles in less than 15 minutes. It took Spoone 21 minutes when he arrived. This brought him to a reckoning.
He could waste all the scraping that his parents, Mitch, a forklift operator, and Tammy, a bartender and office clerk, had done to support his dreams. Or he could haul himself out of bed for a swimming class every morning and run at least two miles every day.
"I just put in my head," he said, "that if this is what I want to do, this is what must be done."
As the pounds melted away, his pitching velocity rose.
The Orioles took notice, grabbing the local boy in the eighth round, 150 spots behind his future buddy, Erbe.
His Rookie-level debut in Bluefield did not go smoothly. He couldn't find the plate enough and couldn't stay calm when a bad bounce went against him.
After that season, he met Jennifer Kunze, a Pasadena girl who would become his fiancee. She and his agent urged him to think about what his temper might cost him.
Spoone's performance improved at Single-A Delmarva. He remained intense on the mound, pumping his fist and yelping after big outs, but he shelved the negativity.
When he reached Frederick, he discovered a new weapon. His thumb hurt one day, so he started messing with a two-seam fastball grip instead of a four-seamer. Manager Tommy Thompson's eyes grew wide as batters helplessly pounded Spoone's sinkers into the dirt.
