I’m proud to say that new Orioles Hall of Famer Adam Jones once honored me with a pie in the face.
Those were the days, my friends, when the O’s were on the rebound and Jones was right in the middle of the Buck Showalter renaissance, playing a terrific center field and establishing a leadership position in the Orioles’ clubhouse.
He was still a kid then and, in my mind, had the perfect personality for a young Baltimore superstar – playful when it was warranted and dead serious when the lights came on at Camden Yards. He was the first to remind everyone that baseball was supposed to be fun and also the first to point out when it was time to get down to business.
So I had to smile when the Orioles decided to celebrate Jones’ induction into the team’s Hall of Fame with a bobblehead giveaway that portrays AJ with a whipped cream pie instead of a baseball glove on his left hand.
Jones either didn’t know or didn’t care that a pie in the face as great comedy got old during the days of vaudeville and silent movies, so he resurrected it as a regular part of the Orioles’ instant on-field interview after wins during the middle 2010s. He even agreed to stage one starring yours truly to create a video for my blog “The Schmuck Stops Here.” (I thought it made YouTube, but I just looked and couldn’t find it.)
That, however, was not why he quickly became one of my all-time favorite Orioles. What I respected most about Adam the player, who will be joined on the field for Saturday’s pregame ceremony by former O’s outfielder Joe Orsulak and longtime broadcaster Tom Davis, was that he was always brutally honest about the things that mattered to him, whether on or off the field. Whether you could handle the truth or not.
I stayed close to his locker at spring training because I knew that he almost always showed up in camp with something on his mind. And when something was on his mind, nothing was off the record.
That mattered because Jones, as baseball players go, had gravitas. Teammates looked up to him even before he was a seasoned veteran since it was obvious that he knew how to lead in the right direction. He cared about his teammates and he cared about his adopted community, championing the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and brightening the lives of youngsters like the late beloved Orioles fan Mo Gaba.
Jones has grown up well. He’s a dedicated family man and now a special adviser in the Orioles’ front office, but he spent a few minutes on Friday reflecting on the playing career that placed him among the Orioles’ immortals. That career started with the one-sided deal in 2008 that brought him to Baltimore along with pitchers Chris Tillman, George Sherrill and two other players for Erik Bedard.
No one would know until later how one-sided it would be, but Jones was too busy making that so to think about anything else.
“All I thought was, I just want to play,’’’ he said. “If you play long enough and do well, it [the game] will reward you with things. I just wanted to play baseball and the Orioles provided that for me. It [the trade] was an opportunity … I got an opportunity and didn’t let it go.”
We all know the rest. Jones played 11 seasons here and was part of three playoff teams. He played all 162 games in the Orioles’ turnaround season in 2012 with 32 home runs and 83 RBIs. He followed that up with career highs in batting average (.287), home runs (33) and RBIs (108). Throw in five All-Star Games and three Gold Gloves and you get to wear a suit to the Orioles’ Hall of Fame luncheon five years after retiring.
“Trust me, I’m never going to wear this in the office,’’ he joked, “I might if [team owner David] Rubenstein’s here. It’s been a great learning experience, obviously on the other side.
“I grew up in this game and I grew up in this city, so to be able to work with [Mike] Elias and his staff and obviously on the community side, which is even more important in my eyes, it’s humbling. Because the people do remember what I did when I was playing. Now I’m able to do it in a different capacity with the Orioles, and I’m going to use their money instead of mine.I think we have a lot of things in the works. It’s going to be fun.”