FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Orioles position players aren't required to report until Tuesday, but Aubrey Huff already has been pumping his legs on a stair climber in the tiny weight room near the clubhouse entrance. The rock music blaring from a radio is the proper audio accompaniment for a ballplayer whose red hair has been bleached blond.

"I used to get it done when I was struggling and it never helped," he said. "I figured that I'd try it now and see what happened."

Maybe Huff just needed to find something in his life that he could go back and change.

The designated hitter and part-time first baseman arrived early to spring training at Fort Lauderdale Stadium and roamed among the pitchers and catchers, only a month removed from surgery to repair a sports hernia. And because his heart and mind need as much healing as his body.

Huff is grieving the loss of his close friend, 28-year-old pitcher Joe Kennedy, who collapsed and died in the early morning Nov. 23 at his in-laws' home in Tampa. The cause of death was listed as hypertensive heart disease that went undetected in his yearly physicals.

"If you have it, I guess you don't really know," said Huff, who had dinner with his former Tampa Bay Devil Rays teammate two nights before the pitcher's death. "I don't know how that works, but apparently, we're just so unprotected. We have no idea, even with all the EKGs we take.

"It's a tough time. It was very unfortunate. He was an awesome dude. Life's fragile, and you just never know when you're going to go. It can happen to anybody."

Huff requested switching his number to 17 after checking with Kennedy's wife.

"I asked her if it would be cool if I wore it this year because that's what he wore in Tampa," Huff said. "I wanted to wear that for him this year."

Huff's days in camp are spent in a sweat-soaked T-shirt while he uses exercise equipment and hits off a tee in the indoor cage, and as the training staff tries to get him ready for Opening Day. He spent six weeks at home rehabilitating a hip flexor before a magnetic resonance imaging revealed a slight tear in the abdominal area.

"I'm just now starting to get back to normal," he said. "Last week was when I started really feeling good. I should be ready to go by the [exhibition] games, at least."

Huff started lifting light weights after arriving in camp, and he ran sprints Thursday for the first time.

"It's not a lot of powerlifting, that's for sure," he said. "But you don't do that for baseball anyway."

Altering his winter routine might prove beneficial for a player who is a notoriously slow starter. Huff batted .235 in April, but he hit .346 in 52 games beginning Aug. 1.

For his career, Huff is a .236 hitter in March and April and a .255 hitter in May, but his average jumps to .321 in August.

"The last few years, I started swinging and lifting really early and started out slow," he said. "Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Now I'm going in with the mind-set that I'm a quick starter. I keep telling myself that."

The Orioles need his mantra to become a reality. The lineup has a gaping hole in the middle after they traded Miguel Tejada to the Houston Astros in December.

"We need him to get healthy and get off to a good start and contribute to our ballclub offensively," manager Dave Trembley said. "We can't wait to get him hot after the All-Star break."

Huff raised the blood pressure of the organization in October by appearing on a Tampa-based satellite radio show and divulging information about his personal life that wasn't suitable for family listening. He also used a derogatory term to describe Baltimore, though he insisted later that he was acting.

Trembley called Huff over the winter to discuss what happened, but he didn't broach the subject in camp.

"I'm not his dad. I don't need to deal with it anymore with him," Trembley said. "It was a situation that, if we could all take an eraser and erase it off the board, we would. This business is such that you deal with inappropriate behavior and you have to discipline guys. You have bad days with people.

"But you have to have the ability to shrug it off and let it go. You can't hold grudges, and you can't carry things with these guys because it festers and it just makes for unpleasant relationships. And you can't have that. The season's too long."

Huff paid a hefty fine for his conduct. He won't know whether the matter is truly behind him until the season starts and he's reintroduced to fans in Baltimore.

"We took what measures we could take as a team," Orioles president Andy MacPhail said. "We let him know the depth of our unhappiness. And it's not really closed because he's going to have to deal with the repercussions himself. I think he understands that, and I'm confident that he'll handle it in a professional manner. It's not something that we were thrilled about, but it's done now."

The time has come to move forward. And Huff is trying to do that, with blond hair and a new number on his back.

roch.kubatko@baltsun.com