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."
