B.J. Surhoff: He was a perfectly fine player who three times hit .300 and once hit .299 … and he is one of the few to have played all nine positions in the major leagues. His best year was probably 1999, when he played all 162 games and hit .308 with 28 homers and 107 RBIs. But offense was so out of control in 1999 that none of the three totals even ranked in the league’s Top 10.

You probably remember that Surhoff was the first pick of the 1985 draft out of North Carolina. Well, my buddy Chardon Jimmy has a brother who pitched for Ohio U around that time, and he once got to face Surhoff. Needless to say, it did not go well. Surhoff crushed a home run that, according to Jimmy, was still going up when it was last seen. It was a monster homer, the sort of brush with greatness that nobody in the family ever forgets. Whenever Surhoff would show up on television for the next two decades, Jimmy would call his brother and say: “Um, Surhoff is up. I was just thinking: Hey, you faced him. What would you throw him here?”