B. J. Surhoff, 1996 Score Select #133

In exactly one week, I will be at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, watching Chris Tillman and the Orioles do their best to win the first game of the American League Division Series. Their opponent is not set in stone yet, but it's probably going to be the Detroit Tigers. Until then, I'll try to wait patiently.

One thing I can do to pass the time is search the video library on MLB.com. A few nights ago, I went searching for 1990s Orioles highlights. There were a few clips from Game One of the 1996 ALDS, the first postseason game in Baltimore in 13 years and the first ever at Camden Yards. It's a nice glimpse of the exciting atmosphere, and it should rekindle some warm memories for O's fans.

The Wild Card-winning Birds outslugged the Indians 10-4, adding four home runs to their record-setting regular season total of 257. Brady Anderson kept up his improbable season with a leadoff home run off of Charles Nagy in the bottom of the first, only for Manny Ramirez to answer with his on leadoff blast against David Wells in the next half-inning. B. J. Surhoff's rebuttal came in the bottom of the second, a go-ahead solo shot to right-center field. The Orioles kept up the pressure in the third inning, with Rafael Palmeiro and Cal Ripken each adding a run-scoring hit. Wells gave both runs right back, and then things cooled off for a few innings.

In the bottom of the sixth, Baltimore chased Nagy with two walks sandwiched around a single. Alan Embree came out of the Tribe bullpen and got Roberto Alomar to hit a shallow fly ball for the second out, but Chris Hoiles tagged and scored the fifth run for the home team. Embree plunked Palmeiro to re-load the bases and gave way to Paul Shuey. Bobby Bonilla worked the count full and then launched Shuey's sixth pitch onto the flag court for a game-breaking grand slam. The Indians pushed across a single run in their next at-bat to end Wells' day, but the O's bullpen wriggled out of further trouble. Terry Mathews, of all people, coaxed an inning-ending groundout from Albert Belle with runners on second and third. Surhoff capped the scoring after the seventh-inning stretch with his second homer of the game, another solo shot. Randy Myers closed out the game with a stress-free perfect ninth inning, and the Orioles were on their way to a surprising four-game series win over the defending American League champs.

B. J. Surhoff, 1996 Pinnacle Aficionado #92

I hope they used B. J. Surhoff's good side for that profile shot.

B. J. Surhoff, 2005 Topps Total #6

I survived the Plunge yesterday, but I won't have time to share the pictures until tomorrow. I know - I'm such a tease. But I did take a last-minute trip to King of Prussia this afternoon for the periodic Philly Card Show. I'd only gotten their postcard in the mail yesterday, leaving me very little time to budget something extra or to compile my want lists. I think I did pretty well nonetheless, bolstering a few of my 1970s sets with some star cards marked down to one dollar or less. A got a nice variety of Post Cereal cards, knocked down my 1975 Topps set needs to one lonely, pricey George Brett second-year card, and even walked away with a discounted wax box of 2005 Topps Total. I hit my spending limit within about 90 minutes of entering the convention, and there were plenty of other great vintage deals that I just had to bypass. I'll try to give myself more prep time by remembering that the next show comes along in late September.

B. J. Surhoff, 2004 MLB Showdown #44

It's 11:30 PM Eastern. Do you know where your B. J. Surhoff is?

B. J. Surhoff, 1997 Upper Deck #304

For their 1997 base set, Upper Deck took some of the guesswork out of puzzling out when the pictures on the cards had been taken. It was a neat idea that was gone completely by 1999. Their reporting checks out here; on April 29, 1996, the Orioles did indeed host the Rangers, and B. J. Surhoff "went yard", lining a ball over the right field fence off of Rick Helling in the bottom of the seventh inning. It was a game-winning shot, as it broke a 7-7 tie and neither team scored for the rest of the contest. This game was as wild as the score suggests, with the Rangers jumping out to a 5-0 lead by the third inning, sending O's starter Kent Mercker to an early shower. Baltimore charged back with a three-spot in the third, but reliever Jimmy Haynes gave a pair of runs back in the fifth to make it 7-3. A Mike Devereaux solo homer and a Surhoff two-run double narrowed the deficit to one in the home half of the fifth, and set the stage for the Orioles to rally for the decisive runs in the seventh. Roberto Alomar led off with a double, stole third base, and scored the tying run on a Rafael Palmeiro sacrifice fly. Then it was over to Surhoff for his big blast, and the Baltimore bullpen combo of Haynes, Jesse Orosco, and Randy Myers successfully walked a tightrope to get the last six outs. Texas stranded 13 men on base, including four in the last two innings. So I guess what I'm saying is that this was a good choice by the Upper Deck folks.

B. J. Surhoff, 1997 Collector's Choice #43

I've never really given it all that much thought, but I suppose it's not common for a baseball card action photo to depict its subject making eye contact with the camera. Now that I've seen B. J. Surhoff's icy stare boring holes straight through me, I think I know why. I didn't mean anything by it, B. J.! Don't hurt me!

B.J. Surhoff, 1999 Skybox Thunder #16

Copied verbatim from the back of this card:

"Give him a chance, and Surhoff will set it off. Yeah, everybody knows...you're always kickin' it with the O's."

That's...that's just beautiful. I think I need a moment.

B.J. Surhoff, 1997 Fleer Ultra #423

Well, it's past my bedtime, so enjoy the often-intense B.J. Surhoff actually cracking a smile in this candid spring training photo. B.J. is just one of the former Orioles lending a helping hand in Sarasota this year as an instructor, joining former teammates such as Brady Anderson, Mike Bordick, Chris Hoiles, and Alan Mills.

B.J. Surhoff, 1996 Skybox Emotion XL#10

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you got what you wanted. Santa and/or my lovely family provided generously, with a new iPhone 4S, a slow cooker with lid security (so that I might not spill chili in my new car...again), a few desired baseball books, and of course some nifty new O's merchandise: orange and black flannel pajama pants, some utility gloves with the now-retro "serious bird" logo, and a couple of wine bottle stoppers. My latest Christmas was indeed a good one.

If you were one of the folks responsible for the Emotion cards, I hope you got a dictionary bookmarked near the word "emotion". B. J. Surhoff is indeed tracking the flight of his ball in the above photo, but that's not so much an emotion.

B.J. Surhoff, 1997 Skybox Metal Universe #9

You know what they say: some days you're on top of the world, and some days you're trapped in the middle of an etched-foil nuclear reaction. Who says that? I don't know...probably whichever paint-huffing loonies designed Metal Universe.

B.J. Surhoff, 2000 Upper Deck MVP #125

I can appreciate the effort that goes into selecting just the right photo for a baseball card, and it sounds like a dream job for a cartophile such as myself. There are only so many times you can see an outfielder tracking a fly ball, a slugger unleashing a power swing, or an ace pitcher in the midst of his windup before it all starts running together. There's a desire for the creative and unconventional. With that being said, there's probably a reason you don't see many cards immortalizing the batter as he loosens his stance and glances back to see whether the umpire has called a ball or a strike. It's not terribly dynamic. Still, it seems somewhat fitting for B.J. Surhoff. I remember him as a player who was deadly serious, and often let his frustrations show. Mercifully, he wasn't as temperamental and demonstrative as certain other players of his ilk (*cough cough Paul O'Neill cough*).

B.J. Surhoff, 2000 Topps Stadium Club #61

The 2011 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot has been released, and it's both a Who's Who of 1990s and early 2000s MLB and a stark reminder of how old we're all getting. Former Expos and Giants pitcher Kirk Rueter is eligible this year; I remember him going 8-0 for Montreal as a rookie in 1993. Bobby Higginson debuted with the Tigers in 1995, for the love of Jeff!

There is no shortage of ex-Orioles on the ballot, either. Holdovers Roberto Alomar, Harold Baines, Tim Raines, and Lee Smith are joined by first-timers Kevin Brown, Charles Johnson, Rafael Palmeiro, and B.J. Surhoff. That's eight guys who wore the orange and black out of a total of 33 eligible players. It figures to be a brutally competitive vote, as Alomar and longtime bridesmaid Bert Blyleven both fell just short of enshrinement last year and are early favorites for 2011. The biggest name to join the field is Jeff Bagwell, who put up a .297/.408/.540 slash line - or 449 home runs and 1529 RBI if you prefer counting stats.

There are some returning ballot members who are have gotten bafflingly anemic vote totals thus far, including Raines, Smith, Alan Trammell, and Edgar Martinez. With Mark McGwire meeting up with new candidates like Palmeiro and Juan Gonzalez, the morality play about steroid use will take center stage once more. I'm fatigued by the whole thing, and it's my opinion that there's no way we'll ever know for sure that any player from the past two decades was clean, so every player should be judged on their career performance. The "steroid era" will just be another label some day, much like the pre-integration era or the dead-ball era. Under this criteria, McGwire and Palmeiro are Hall of Famers, but not Juan Gone.

Let the debate begin...or continue. We won't know who is in and who is out (and who's dropped from the ballot altogether) until January 5.

B. J. Surhoff, 2000 Pacific Private Stock #17

If you haven't already, you should book Baseball-Reference's Blog and Stat of the Day. You can also follow along on Twitter, if you are so inclined. They posted a list yesterday that caught my eye. Vladimir Guerrero had just collected his 1,000th hit as an Angel, making him one of 13 players in baseball history to reach that mark for two different teams (of course, his first 1,215 hits were with the Expos). On this fairly exclusive list, there were two Orioles: Rafael Palmeiro (1,692 with the Rangers and 1,071 with the Birds) and B. J. Surhoff (1,064 hits with the Brewers and 1,072 with the O's). This is a fun bit of trivia that becomes even more interesting because the two were teammates in Baltimore from 1996-1998 and 2004-2005. Of course, you can also see that Surhoff finished his career with exactly one more hit in orange and black than Raffy. Palmeiro almost certainly would have overtaken B. J. if he hadn't wandered away from the team with a month left in the 2005 season. Why did he bail on the team, anyway? Oh, yeah.

B. J. Surhoff, 2000 Pacific Revolution #23

*Sharp intake of breath*

GGGGAAAAAAHHHHH!!! WHY, PACIFIC, WHY WOULD YOU ASSAULT MY SENSES WITH THIS MONSTROSITY???

Seriously, I didn't think this card could get any uglier, but it managed to scan even worse than it appears to the naked eye. If you held this thing in your hand, you'd see silver foil in the background with some random, barely discernible squiggles interwoven. The garish foreground squiggles are actually gold foil. You just can't have enough foil, right?

What was the purpose of Pacific as a card brand? I never collected it. Did anyone collect it? Why did they seemingly have dozens of sets each year, all with cheap-looking, gaudy designs? Paramount, Revolution, Omega, Aurora...it sounds like a bunch of off-brand autos.

I sort of miss Fleer, Donruss, and Score as baseball card brands. But Pacific? Get real.

B. J. Surhoff, 2005 Fleer Tradition #103

Reader William brought up an interesting topic in a comment to yesterday's Jeff Conine card: the music that players choose when they come up to bat or in from the bullpen. He remarked that Conine used to have Rush's "Tom Sawyer" play him to the plate, an excellent choice indeed. I always got a kick out of the unlikely players who chose gangsta rap songs. Brian Roberts' selection was the Notorious B.I.G's "Hypnotize" for several years, and Rafael Palmeiro used to prefer Tupac's "California Love". One player whose music always irritated me was Jay Gibbons (Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Can't Stop"). It's got a great riff at the beginning, but it sounds tantalizingly close to The Guess Who's classic "American Woman", which I would greatly prefer. It was such a tease. Among pitchers, songs have ranged from the awesome (Rodrigo Lopez went with Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child of Mine") to the creepy (Chris Ray's choice of Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams") to the downright drowsy (short-lived sidearmer Steve Reed entered games to Coldplay's "Clocks").

But for my money, former third baseman/outfielder B. J. Surhoff had the best taste in music among recent Orioles players. I remember him strolling into the batters' box to the strains of Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing", but according to this page he also had a predilection for Pearl Jam's "Evenflow".

When I daydream about baseball, I think about the songs that I would most like to hear blaring over the PA at Oriole Park at Camden Yards to signal to the crowd that I was coming in to shut down a game or drive in the winning runs. As a pro wrestling fan, I understand the importance of the proper music. There's nothing more electrifying than the sound of a crowd coming unglued as their favorite athlete or performer pops into view - that Pavlovian response to the first few notes of their theme song. For a while, I was partial to Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure". It's my favorite Queen song, and I'd feel it was my duty to reclaim its basic beat from that cheap ripoff artist Vanilla Ice. If I were a closer or late inning reliever, it would be especially appropriate. But for the past few years, I've been obsessed with the Arcade Fire's "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)". That song just gets my blood pumping like no other; it makes me feel like I could run through a brick wall.

So, what's your favorite theme music for an actual baseball player? If you played, what would your choice be?