FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The impromptu show started when Nick Markakis spotted a basketball and darted across the clubhouse to grab it. For the next five minutes, he effortlessly spun it on various objects, first on his index finger, then on the tongue of his team-issued belt and finally on the tip of a ballpoint pen.
By now, a small group of Orioles had gathered around Markakis, challenging the outfielder to do more. So Markakis, wearing only his white sliding shorts, picked up a chair, lifted it over his head and balanced it on his chin, holding the wobbly chair upright for about 10 seconds.
Chad Bradford and Ben Davis, standing nearby, stopped their discussion to watch.
"Wow," Bradford mouthed as Markakis flipped the chair onto the floor.
"I know there's nothing he can't do," said Orioles hitting coach Terry Crowley, stopping by to see what all the fuss was about. "I just don't want to see him get hurt."
Later attempting to balance a shopping cart on his chin, Markakis gave up on the pursuit when the child's seat on the cart kept coming loose and hitting him in the face. His show was officially over.
"It's definitely refreshing," said Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts, who stopped eating to watch Markakis' antics. "That's what it's all about. We're playing a kid's game. There are times to be serious and he knows that. He knows when you can act stupid and when you have to be serious. He's very fun to be around."
The Markakis that Orioles fans know is quiet and soft-spoken, uncomfortable in front of the media and reluctant to be the center of attention. The attention is tough to avoid on the field, where he's already become the team's best all-around player and the face of the organization's rebuilding efforts.
The Markakis that teammates know is free-spirited and talkative, impulsive and inquisitive and yes, a little bit different from your average 24-year-old on the verge of stardom.
"He's very good at the weird things," said pitcher Adam Loewen, Markakis' closest friend on the team. "The guy can juggle anything, balance anything on his chin. He can pretty much do anything. If he enjoys something, he's going to get good at it."
Markakis still fits the profile of the guy in high school whom all the girls love and all the guys envy, the star athlete who dates the head cheerleader and is successful at everything he tries.
"When I see something I like and I'm not very good at it, I'm going to keep trying it, trying it and trying it until I get good at it," Markakis said. "It [stinks] when your buddies are good at something and you're not. You try to keep up with them. I wouldn't say I'm good at a lot of things. I just pick up things quickly."
Markakis' parents learned that early after buying golf clubs for Nick and his brother. The only problem was Nick's set was designed for a right-handed player. No matter, the left-handed Markakis taught himself to play golf right-handed and still does so, favoring his left hand with everything else.
Markakis golfs sporadically and shoots in the 80s. He recently won a long-drive competition by launching a ball 375 yards, his career best. He also is a pretty good marksman - he sets up shooting targets outside his Georgia home - and gets in the occasional game of basketball. He has also become the team's reigning pingpong champ after the trade of Erik Bedard, whom Markakis grudgingly admitted he could never beat.
"I haven't seen him be bad at anything," Orioles pitcher Brian Burres said.
Almost every night since arriving at spring training, Markakis and several friends have met up at a local bowling alley. Markakis started bowling as a child, but it's become an obsession recently. He has his own ball and spends almost two hours a night at the lanes.
"They have some good pizza and we get some big pitchers of Mountain Dew and fruit punch and we just bowl," said Markakis, who averages in the 180s and is organizing a team bowling night. "People just leave us alone and we have a lot of fun."
Markakis, who barely spoke in the clubhouse two years ago as a rookie, has started a new craze among his teammates with his purchase of Heelys, athletic shoes that have wheels on the bottom. The shoes are usually worn by children, but that matters little to Markakis, who sports them to and from the stadium and rolls around on them in the clubhouse and in the players' parking lot.
"We visited him [last week] and we were walking next to him and all of a sudden, he goes gliding by us on the sidewalk," said Dennis Markakis, Nick's father. "We didn't even know he was wearing them. He's like a little kid, always having a good time."
Loewen and Jeremy Guthrie have bought Heelys, and Burres says he wants to as well. On a recent off day, Markakis spent much of the afternoon rolling through a local mall. He also enjoys doing it at the grocery store but recently was scolded while he was wheeling in and out of aisles at a local Wal-Mart.
When told that such behavior might be perceived as unusual for a 24-year-old who happens to be a pretty well-known baseball player, Markakis said: "People look at me weird, but the biggest thing is, I'm really laid back and I really don't care what people think. If it's fun, I like to do it. The little things to me are the most fun, the things that people don't think of."
Markakis said most of his tricks come to him at the spur of the moment. One day this offseason, Markakis was at the house of his close friend, Florida Marlins outfielder Jeremy Hermida, when he spotted a vacuum.
"I just was looking at it, saw the handle, and I said, 'Man, I could balance that on my chin,' " said Markakis, who proceeded to do just that. "As a kid, I was always getting into stuff, trying new stuff. I could probably do a lot of things that most people wouldn't even think of.
"Once I signed [a professional contract], my buddies told me that I was going to change. But there's no point in that. You see people change and get big heads. You should just stay the same, stay who you are. People like you for who you are, not what you do."
jeff.zrebiec@baltsun.com