Brady Anderson Occupies His Mind On and Off the Field

As quickly as Brady Anderson masters something, he moves on to the next challenge.

“I can't talk,” Anderson answers the phone one night. “I'm playing chess.”

On another occasion: “I can't talk. I'm reading about chess.”

“I think he's pretty good,” says teammate Alan Mills, who has recently been spending down time in the clubhouse and on team charters playing chess with Anderson. Albert Belle is an another opponent and Anderson has been tutoring Mike Mussina and conditioning coach Tim Bishop.

“I'm a novice,” says Bishop. “He's actually teaching me. He's very knowledgeable. He reads a lot about chess and about different players” strategies and moves.”

From his races against world-class sprinters to becoming a competitive hitting partner to his professional tennis playing friends, it is apparent that Anderson is one focused dude.

“A lot of my life is spent doing something physical,” he says, “but I love to read and educate myself.”

And he's found another intellectual release in the millennia-old game of chess.

“I really love chess,” he says. “I like the mental stimulation that it gives you. It's strategic, it teaches you to respond to other people's actions. It's a great game. Obviously, the game has endured for centuries and centuries.”

Such diversions have been useful over the last three seasons, as he has watched his team languish through sub-mediocrity after nearly reaching the World Series in consecutive seasons.

“It's been frustrating,” says Anderson, “especially since we were one of the best teams in the majors in '96 and '97. It looked like every year we were going to be competitive, and then we sort of broke up the system that we had going. I really think it's on the right track again, even though our record is not indicative of that. I just have a feeling that we're a little bit more on track than we have been the last two years.”

With the Orioles out of contention early again this season, Anderson has given way in center field for a few games to prospect Luis Matos. In July, Anderson, 36, played right field at Camden Yards for the first time in his 13-year Oriole career (Former manager Johnny Oates would sometimes use Anderson in the more difficult right fields of opposing stadiums, including Fenway Park). While it is no secret that Anderson covets his regular position of the last six years, he seems unopposed to an occasional change of pace.

“I didn't mind it,” he says.

He views the switch as he might a move in chess, analyzing the corresponding strategies that are in play at each position. In center, Anderson methodically plays hitters straight away, a perspective explained to him by Cal Ripken, who told him “how much better my angles are when I play right behind the pitcher and don't worry about seeing the ball that well off the bat if the pitcher is blocking you.”

“It is easy for me to cover both gaps,” Anderson explains. “Early on in the season when I really couldn't feel my foot [due to a lingering nerve injury from spring training], I had to cheat on one side or the other and sort of leave a weak spot in one of the gaps. Ideally, you want to be able to cover everything — back, forward and both gaps. I think I've been playing center really well since my legs got better.”

Anderson is enjoying the unobstructed view from right and points out several other advantages to the position.

“You get a really good look at the ball in right field because there is nobody impeding your view, it's just a clear shot right to the batter. You can cheat a little bit more. For instance, on a right-handed hitter with two strikes, you can come in and play pretty shallow and try to take a blooper away. You try to think of the things that you can do because the space that you have to cover is pretty limited. You're not going to make any catches over the wall in our park in right, so there's another reason you can play even shallower. Also, the throws are easier from right field.”

Reminded of a previous center-to-right transition when he first came to the big leagues, Anderson becomes a bit nostalgic for his early career. He still recalls the location and type of every pitch thrown to him when he made his major league debut on Opening Day 1988 for the Red Sox at Fenway. He can vividly recount his first hit against Detroit ace Jack Morris. But that story of chest-high sliders and an infield hit is not nearly as entertaining as what happened after the game. The veteran Sox presented Anderson with his first-hit ball during the third inning, after it was accidentally dropped in the mud, inscribed with a number of pertinent comments to “Grady”, they crossed out the “G” and put a “B,” remembers Anderson.

After he was given the ball, Anderson says, “They thought I was going to be really upset. They didn't understand that to me it had to do with getting the hit. I didn't care if I had the ball or not, whether they dropped it in mud or whether they wrote on it. I didn't care. And they were kind of sitting around waiting for me to react.”

Of course, Anderson had received his first big league prank as well as his first big league hit.

“They gave me my real ball and said they were just messing with me. I told them I kind of liked the other one.”

From that auspicious beginning, Anderson flirted with success in the majors, then went back to Triple-A before being dealt to Baltimore for Mike Boddicker in 1988. Now, as Anderson zips past some legendary names on his way up the Oriole Top 10 lists — and, dude, No. 15 on the all-time hit-by pitch-list — he doesn't mind pausing to reflect on some of the bad times, too. It doesn't take much prodding to hear about the classic moment on a wet Toronto highway in 1991 with long-time buddy Rene Gonzales that may have marked the nadir of his baseball career and the high-water mark of his wit.

“Gonzo was just hauling ass along the freeway in a torrential downpour,” Anderson remembers. “It's one of those things where you get up on the edge of your seat because you're not in control when someone else is driving. They're going 80 MPH and you can't see more than 20 feet ahead of you. He was just getting after it. There was a split second when I thought, 'Geez, man, this is kind of dangerous.' Then I thought, 'What do I care?' So I looked at him and said, 'Gonz, if I wasn't hitting .178, I'd asked you to slow down.' I realized the line was funny at the time. I said it for his amusement. But I really would have asked him to slow down if I was hitting higher.”