Student-Athlete Alumni Spotlight: Aubrey Huff
Dec. 16, 2003
By Tracy Gale
Coral Gables, Fla. (www.hurricanesports.com) — – Some kids play sports year-round, looking forward to playing basketball as much as they do to football and baseball. As a boy growing up in Texas Aubrey Huff just loved baseball.
“I’d play basketball to stay in shape,” Aubrey says. “But as soon as it was time for baseball I’d leave the basketball team. One year to improve my footwork I went out for the tennis team. The only match I won was against a 250-pound kid! For me it was just about baseball.”
The tall lanky Texan grew up hitting every day in the batting cage behind his house. However, since he wasn’t a power hitter in high school, Aubrey didn’t get even one scholarship offer coming out of Brewer High School in Fort Worth.
“Me and two other guys, we drove up to Vernon Junior College in Wichita Falls to try out,” Aubrey remembers. “Two of us left the tryout with baseball scholarships. Vernon was my one chance to continue playing ball. The coach really liked my swing.”
In 1996, after one season as a member of the Vernon College Chaparrals, Aubrey got a phone call from former UM assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Turtle Thomas.
“I had bulked up while at Vernon, I really hit the weight room and lifted a lot. In high school I was 6’4″ and 175 pounds,” laughs Huff.
By the time Coach Thomas started recruiting him, Aubrey was 220 pounds, with a sweet power stroke who also hit for average.
Aubrey really liked Coach Thomas [now at LSU] and readily accepted the scholarship offer to the University of Miami. He arrived in Coral Gables in August of 1996. For Aubrey Coral Gables might as well have been Mars.
“To say I was in complete culture shock is an understatement. I didn’t take a recruiting visit or anything, so my first time in Miami was when I moved here. I drove down in my Chevy extended cab pickup, wearing boots and flannel shirts. I lived with two teammates, guys who were going to be seniors, in an off-campus apartment. The first day of school, I got lost getting to campus. I ended up near downtown Miami. I kept asking for directions but nobody spoke English! I wanted to go home. That’s it–I just wanted to leave. I couldn’t find anything and I was so miserable.”
Luckily for Aubrey and ‘Canes baseball, things got better in a hurry.”I called my mom and she was like, ‘stick with it.’ After two weeks of this, I realized I was isolating myself. I started hanging out with other new players and incoming students. Things got a lot better.”
Aubrey earned both academic awards and outstanding freshman honors in baseball while at Vernon Junior College. Coming to the University of Miami, Huff majored in business management-organization and got ready for fall ball. He also found there was a lot to appreciate in his new hometown.
“School was going well, the support was there for you to do well. And baseball, too, was great. The team was just unbelievable as far as chemistry. Seriously, to this day I’ve never been on a team, at any level, with better chemistry than what we had when I was a Hurricane.”
Besides baseball, Aubrey enjoyed going with his teammates to UM football games.
“We’d rip on the opposing team, at the Orange Bowl and at basketball games, too! We’d sit in the stands behind the other team and just let loose! We’d also go out together into the Grove. We had a great bond off the field, and I think it meant a lot to how we played on the field.”
Before the season started head baseball Coach Jim Morris gave a speech that Aubrey remembers to this day.
“We’re all sitting there and Coach says, ‘There is only one reason to play this game, and that is to go to Omaha. That’s why we’re here and that’s why we’ve booked these hotel rooms’; and then he gave us the name of the hotel. I was thinking ‘wow’–these are our expectations. It was laid out for us.”
That season was a dream season for the ‘Canes, all the way through the Regional Tournament, which Aubrey considers the most memorable games he played in at Mark Light.
“The 1997 Regionals, we had to beat Arizona State twice in one day to advance to Omaha. We were down by three runs and Jason Michaels hits a grand slam and we win the game! Three hours later we played them again and won. After we won the first game like we did, we all knew we were going to Omaha-and you could see it in their players’ eyes–they knew it too,”
Aubrey was named to the All-Atlantic Regional team, hitting .346 with two HRs and seven RBIs.
In June the Hurricanes went to Omaha and checked in to the hotel that Coach told them they were going to stay in, several months before. Miami finished fifth in the CWS that year, something that still bothers Aubrey.
“We just didn’t get it done. We should have won it all. If you look at that team, from top to bottom we were so strong. I think there are six or seven guys from that team who are in the major leagues.Still, it was amazing, being out there and being on ESPN. I mean, for all of the people who thought you’d never make something of yourself, and then here you are, on national TV playing in the College World Series.”
Aubrey returned for his junior season and knew the goals for his second year were the same as the first: Omaha. The Hurricanes had another great season, going 51-12 and returned to the College World Series. Still, the ‘Canes came up short again.
This major disappointment helped shape Aubrey’s realization of what part baseball plays in his life.
“I learned that baseball isn’t THAT important. I don’t live and die baseball anymore. Baseball is grown men playing a kid’s game. I am more patient now, and I can go to the field with no worries. And I also leave the field with no worries.”
After his junior season the hard-hitting first baseman was drafted in the fifth round by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He signed and went to A-Ball in Charleston. His success there quickly led to Double-A ball in Orlando.
After Double-A Orlando Aubrey’s next stop was Triple-A in Durham, North Carolina. It was here that Aubrey got “the call”: he was wanted in the majors. Aubrey remembers that afternoon very well, including how his mom didn’t believe him when he told her the news.
“First of all, we had the day off in Durham, so it was definitely a ‘pool day’: I was in shorts and a tank top, I was going through the Bank of America drive-thru to get cash. My phone rings and they tell me I am getting called up. I was so excited that I left my ATM card at the bank machine! I called my mom and she said ‘you’re joking.’ I had cried wolf so many times – I’d call her all the time and say ‘I got called up’; so now when it happened she was like, ‘yeah right.’ She had to check it out first on the Devil Rays website to believe me.”
Once Aubrey got promoted to Double-A ball in Orlando, it seemed pretty clear that he would make the major league club. It sure seemed definite to his mom because at that point the Huff family-mom Fonda and sister Angela, moved from Texas to Florida.
“My mom is a teacher and, once it looked pretty good that I was going to get called up, she looked for a job here. She got a job at Northeast High School in St. Petersburg and moved my younger sister here too.”
Aubrey’s sister Angela works as a nursing assistant, and both mom and sis can be found at all Devil Rays home games at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg.
Some people know that Aubrey and his sister were raised in a single-parent household. Not many people know why: his dad was killed on the job while trying to protect a lady from her estranged husband, who had come to the jobsite with a gun looking for her. The experience of growing up with only one parent has inspired Aubrey to create a charity with the distinct mission of helping single-parent households. The charity is slated to begin in 2004. He also participates in Devil Rays community events, like hospital caravans to visit sick children.
Single, Aubrey lives year-round in the St. Pete area with his King Charles Springer Spaniel, Chloe. During the off-season Aubrey likes to relax by hanging out at home. But he also makes it a point to travel.
“I basically take the month of October off from baseball-no batting cage, no weights, nothing. I work on stuff around my house. Then in November I get going again. But this year I went on a cruise, we went to the western Mediterranean and it was awesome. I’m going to Las Vegas this month and going back out west, to Lake Tahoe, for the New Year’s holidays.”
In 2003 Aubrey was voted the MVP of the Devil Rays after his breakout season: a .311 average, 34 home runs and 107 RBIs. Asked about his goals for next season and Aubrey says he doesn’t make goal lists.
“I’ve never really set out with a goal sheet for the season. What if it’s halfway through the season and I’ve already reached my numbers for home runs or doubles? Will I coast or slack off? So my goal has always been to contribute-I want to get a hit a day. If I do that, if I can hit .300, then everything else, all of the numbers will fall in to place.”
Once his major league career comes to a close, Aubrey won’t be sitting around looking at old press clippings. His follow-up to the big leagues is the big leagues of another kind, one just as competitive: country music. Tampa Bay sportswriters have written of Aubrey’s desire to compete on the television show ‘Nashville Star’, the country version of ‘American Idol.’
“I sing George Strait songs, Kenny Chesney, Garth Brooks. Any of the new country, I can sing it. I started taking requests in the minor leagues, especially in Triple-A, in Durham. We used to sing a lot at a karaoke bar there. Then at my buddy [and Devil Rays teammate] Travis Harper’s wedding in West Virginia, I sang with the band for about two hours worth of requests. This is what I want to do after baseball ends.”
Asked to reflect on his UM playing days, Aubrey is most grateful for the support he received from Coach Morris.
“Coach Morris gave me confidence. I didn’t have that when I got to Miami. I wasn’t even sure I could play Division-I baseball, let alone go to the big leagues. I can’t thank him enough for the confidence and encouragement he gave me.”
And neither can fans of baseball in the Sunshine State.
