Baseball Career
Surhoff attended Rye High School in Westchester, New York and hit a monstrous home run as a visitor at Somers High School which cleared route 139 and hit the firehouse. The homerun was dubbed "The Killer," and is infamous in high school baseball lore as it bounced off the firehouse and killed a small squirrel. The spot the homerun landed is still marked to this day. After high school he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was honored as the 1985 ACC Male Athlete of the Year, and played on the very first (1984) U.S. Olympic baseball team. He was a two time first team All-American at UNC and his career batting average of .392 was a school record until Dustin Ackley set the mark at .412 in 2009.
He was selected by the Brewers with the first pick of the 1985 amateur draft. Surhoff was a very versatile player, having appeared at every position except pitcher over the course of his career. He had 2,326 hits and 1,153 RBI in his career. Although always a consistent hitter, having hit over .280 in 12 of his 19 seasons, Surhoff's finest season was his 1999 campaign with the Orioles, in which he led the American League in at-bats (673), ranked second in hits (207), was selected to the American League All-Star team, and ultimately won Most Valuable Oriole honors for the season, becoming one of five players to get 200 or more hits in a season for the team. He also participated in the Home Run Derby. In other notable seasons, he finished sixth in the AL in doubles in 1993 with the Brewers and finished fifth in batting average in the AL with the Brewers in 1995 with a .320 average.
In 2007, Surhoff was elected to the Orioles Hall of Fame, with the official induction ceremony occurring before the start of the Orioles–Twins game on August 25, 2007, at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
Read more about this topic: B. J. Surhoff
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