What kind of person and player is Adley Rutschman? From Oregon to the Orioles, he’s been a star. But he won’t say that.

“Coffee,” Adley said. “And breakfast sandwiches.”

On the brink of so much newness, Rutschman sought to throw it back to a childhood marked by drives just like that one, with his dad, across the Pacific Northwest, invariably for baseball. Except this time, Adley was behind the wheel. With nothing but open road — or, ahem, I-95 traffic — and each other’s company, they made it to Fenway Park in seven hours.

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“It’s the most time that we’ve had in a long while to do something like that,” Adley said. “I was going through an unknown situation at the time, and just having him be able to help out with, ‘Hey, we’re gonna navigate this,’ is huge.”

Rutschman, 28 years old and the face of an Orioles rebuild that never fulfilled its championship destiny, didn’t have to do it that way. He could have flown ― coach, first class, private — and could have paid whomever whatever to pack up his place and send or store his stuff.

But his approach in that emotional time was indicative of who Rutschman is, according to those who know him: loyal, low-key, and loving, with minimal bravado (except on the golf course) and a thoughtfulness as steady as his catching.

On the occasion of his return to Baltimore — with Rutschman’s Red Sox visiting Camden Yards for a four-game series beginning Thursday — key figures from different phases of his life helped provide a clearer picture of Rutschman as an athlete, as a person, and as a son.

In the world of Oregon sports, the Rutschmans are “legends,” according to Pat Casey, former longtime Oregon State baseball coach.

Adley is the grandson of Ad Rutschman, an institution in his decades at Division 3 Linfield College and still the only college coach to win a national title in football and baseball. He is the son of Randy Rutschman, an “absolute guru” of a catching coach, in the words of Zak Taylor, a high school and college teammate of Adley and still one of his closest friends.

So when this next-gen, uber-talented Rutschman burst onto the scene a couple of decades ago, it seemed obvious: He would be a catcher, right?

“There were scouts that told me that they would make him a closer,” Casey said. “He was in the mid-90s in high school with a plus slider.”

Rutschman developed first — and received recruiting attention first — as a pitcher. He touched 93 miles per hour the summer after 10th grade, he said, and as late as the start of his freshman season at Oregon State, the plan was to at least dabble on the mound.

But nobody could deny the teenage Rutschman’s ability behind the plate. That included Taylor, who was a year older and figured he would be the starting backstop for Sherwood High in 2013.

“Then Rutsch comes in [as a ninth-grader], and his body’s got broad shoulders, starting to really develop, I’m seeing him behind the plate, and I hadn’t been around him for about a year, year and a half,” Taylor said. “Holy cow, I need to find a new position.”

Casey said: “This guy’s not just little Adley anymore, running around with a big ol’ smile on his face, just so happy to be at the yard.”

Rutschman wholeheartedly committed to Oregon State to play football — as a kicker who once converted a 63-yard field goal — and baseball. Still, just in case, the Mariners drafted the local kid in the 40th round in 2016, the No. 1,197 pick.

Three years later, he went first overall to the Orioles. He was the “1-1” — first round, first pick.

“I don’t want to be that guy that says, ‘We knew he was going to be the first pick,’ ” said Tom McNamara, a veteran talent evaluator who ran the Mariners’ draft back then. He compared Rutschman to a young Jason Varitek. “An it factor. There was an enthusiasm and energy. He loved playing.”

Rutschman’s collegiate football career lasted one autumn (and one tackle of Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey that still occasionally goes viral). In the summer of 2017, he got eaten up in the Cape Cod League, with 21 strikeouts and 11 hits in 20 games. As a sophomore in 2018, after committing to baseball, he blossomed, leading Oregon State to a College World Series championship and earning the tournament’s most outstanding player honor.

In 2019, he won the Golden Spikes Award as the best amateur baseball player in America.

“He’d have been an NFL kicker if he wanted to be,” Casey said. “I thought it was gonna be awesome, and I didn’t realize how awesome it really was gonna be … He went from being a guy that was projected to be a very, very good player and a draft pick to being, OK, this guy’s got superstar talent.”

Adley Rutschman and Terrin Vavra were rookies together on the 2022 Orioles, including for a late-season series in New York. When a group of guys planned breakfast for the next morning, Rutschman had to opt out. He was headed to MLB Network — an invite normally extended only to big-name players. The others, obviously, gave him flack for that.

That day, before heading to the ballpark, Vavra got a knock at his hotel door.

“It’s Rutsch with an Orioles jersey with my number and my last name on it,” Vavra said.

The jersey was infant-sized. Vavra and his wife had welcomed their daughter into the world about a month prior. Near the end of a long season, mother and baby were back home, Vavra on the road. Rutschman had stopped at MLB’s Manhattan headquarters retail store to grab a customized gift.

“I didn’t expect him to do anything like that, but just because of who he is and how much he cares for the people around him — that was really special to me and a really good representation of who Adley is,” Vavra said. “It wasn’t as simple as him going and getting a Rutschman jersey that’s sold in all the stores.”

Friends, teammates, and coaches describe Rutschman as unusually kind and considerate. He is perhaps surprisingly quiet, almost shy, when new to a situation (such as joining the Red Sox), content to wait to get a feel for the room. When he warms up, he has a playful personality, is known to quote “Step Brothers,” and tries to lead by example, not vocally.

Rutschman has the résumé, but not the demeanor, of a hotshot.

“When I first met Rutsch, the characteristic that stood out to me was his humility,” said Kyle Stowers, an Orioles contemporary since traded to the Marlins. “Being the first overall pick, a guy that had every right to feel himself, just couldn’t have been more of a joy to be around. The stuff on the field speaks for itself, but the quality of person that the Red Sox are getting — you’re getting a 1-1 person.”

Veteran catcher James McCann, Rutschman’s backup in 2023-24, said: “I evaluate guys based on how they treat the bat boys and the people that aren’t getting their own baseball card. He treats them the same way that he treats the 15-year future Hall of Famer.”

When Stowers was getting married after the 2023 season, a celebration that brought the whole gang together, Rutschman won his first Silver Slugger Award — which nobody realized until they saw it on the internet, because he hadn’t mentioned it.

During spring training one year, Stowers asked his roommates, including Rutschman (and Gunnar Henderson and Colton Cowser), to pick up a birthday cake for his wife while the couple was out to dinner. Rutschman & Co. decided to go big, with full-blown decorations for the house they shared.

In the offseasons, Rutschman puts on baseball camps, some catcher-specific. He does so in the city of Portland, where there is a greater need for those resources, as opposed to the affluent suburbs. So beloved is he as an Oregonian that the local news still covers his career on a regular basis.

“Baseball’s an expensive sport,” he said.

Rutschman keeps a small inner circle. His streams of friends — hometown, college, pro ball — sometimes mix on the golf course, which has evolved into another outlet for his competitiveness. Last fall, he hit a hole-in-one.

“He plays the most aggressive form of golf you’ll ever see, but it’s aggressive in the sense that he hits the ball 400 yards,” Vavra said. “He was not in a good spot, behind a tree in a waste bunker. It’s his second shot and he’s 270 yards out. And he asked me what the right shot is. I say, hey, probably just punch it out to here. And he goes, eh, I think I’m just gonna go for it — and he puts the ball on the green. And you’re just like, how the heck did you do that?”

Taylor, the Sherwood/Oregon State teammate, said: “I’m like, Rutsch, I get it, man. If I could move the golf ball like you, I’d do the same thing.”

Regarding the emotions surrounding his return to Baltimore, Rutschman auto-pilots to one of his central principles: Control what you can control. Circumstances such as his Orioles exit — the end of an era, leaving friends, a failure of sorts given the franchise’s trajectory — he could not and cannot control.

“Um, I don’t really know. I don’t. I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” Rutschman said. “That’s — it’ll happen as it will. That’s an uncontrollable. So I think just see what happens and kind of take things as they come.”

It’s cliché. It’s deflective. And it hits different when you are the son of coaches who preached such a philosophy since you were a kid.

Randy and Carol Rutschman were longtime educators at a nearby high school. Carol used to coach golf, and Randy has been all over as a baseball instructor — including the West Coast League, a summer collegiate circuit. As early as middle school, Adley tagged along as a bullpen catcher, getting reps receiving the college kids’ more developed repertoires.

“The dude is such a stud,” Adley said of his dad. “He was a great coach, but he was very hands-off as far as pushing me to play baseball. When I ask him now, he says, ‘I didn’t really care if you played baseball or whatever you did. The only thing I really cared about is if you committed to something, you’re gonna see it through.’ But he never pushed me to go hit balls or catch, so if I wanted it, it had to be on me.”

Adley did want it. Early in high school, father and son developed a routine: predawn batting practice at an indoor cage before heading to first period. Adley laughs at the memory of taking hacks in his school clothes.

“He always had a bucket of balls ready to go when I asked, because I would ask a lot,” he said.

With the Red Sox, a big step up in baseball environment, Rutschman has not made the desired first impression, entering the week batting .170 with one home run in 15 games (and sitting out the past three because of a right elbow injury).

But that foundation of core beliefs, laid by the Rutschmans, remains: Control what he can control — effort and attitude. And when he does something, do it right. See it through.

From the source Tim Healey can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @timbhealey.