In 1998, two decades before rookie Colin Moran drew a curtain call with his first swing at PNC Park, his uncle B.J. Surhoff sat across the table from then-Pirates general manager Cam Bonifay at a Mount Washington restaurant. Bonifay pointed to the North Shore, to the empty space where workers would soon break ground on Pittsburgh’s new ballpark, and presented Surhoff with an offer: a four-year, $15 million free-agent deal to be the Pirates’ next third baseman.
“Pittsburgh made a very legitimate, very serious, very interesting run at me,” Surhoff said Monday by phone from Cockeysville, Md.