Hurt From Start to Finish in '98, Brady Anderson Stayed Tough

“Mind if I get pesto on your tape recorder?” Brady Anderson asks in the early hours of the morning following another disappointing loss in the Orioles' late-August slide from playoff contention. The nocturnal Anderson holds conversations in much the same manner as those frenetic cooking show hosts on Food TV. Mozzarella cheese is shredded and the microwave oven beeps as sushi is brought out of the stainless-steel fridge. It's a good thing the 34-year- old signed a lucrative contract this past off-season because, geez, this guy can eat $6 million worth of food a year.

“I played a game today,” Anderson says between bites, “when I probably shouldn't have been out there. But I'm glad I was.”

The reasons Anderson took the field for his 0-for-3 evening provide insight - both physical and mental - into the travails of the center fielder over the last year. And it helps explain the philosophy of a player who would just as soon miss a game as, well, a late-night meal.

Anderson's trouble started in Detroit just before the '97 All-Star break when he was plunked - not once, but twice - in the left calf. The painful climax came this August 20, when Anderson leaped above the wall attempting to steal a home run from Tampa Bay's Bubba Trammell.

“It's almost impossible to get hit in your left calf when you're a left-handed batter,” Anderson remembers. “I got hit in the same place twice within 30 minutes.”

The contusion left by the dual beaning led to a strained left calf that caused Anderson to place more weight on his right leg. The result: patella tendinitis or jumper's knee in his right leg. The condition persisted for the remainder of last season, aggravated when Anderson jammed his knee into second base while sliding on a muddy infield during the final game of the ALCS. The knee would bother him for the first three months of the off-season. Intense rehab had Anderson running blistering sub-4.5 second 40-yard dashes on a Florida high school track in the spring. In the next-to-last spring training game, Anderson's hand was broken when it was struck by the ball on a stolen base attempt. In the second game of the regular season he strained his right sternoclavicular joint while swinging at a low slider. Thus began the most prolonged slump of his career. On May 11 Anderson was hitting a paltry .063.

“I had to get kind of hot to get to .100,” laughs Anderson. That comment is typical of the self-deprecating wit Anderson displayed during his slough. Intense right down to computer Jeopardy!, Anderson often wryly tutored reporters who might not be aware of the extent of his dilemma: “Guys, 4-for-63 is not a good start to a season.”

Says Anderson: “The world didn't cause my problems, I did. I tried to think of all the people that could possibly be responsible other than myself and I couldn't think of any. So I decided not to bother anybody.” Rather than sulk in the midst of his quagmire, Anderson would still pose his trademark off-the-wall thought-provokers: “Could you be friends with someone who didn't like the Beatles?”

“I don't think the way to overcome your struggles is by moping about them,” says Anderson. “I think I tried to carry on as I always would.” Despite the levity, Anderson burned to change his fortunes and refused to let injury be an excuse to miss games.

“It clearly isn't funny to me,” he says. “What would disappoint me is if I was not prepared. The results obviously weren't there early in the year in the most miserable stretch I've ever been through. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but I'd still rather take the chance and live with a bad result than live with not knowing. I can experience failure and not feel the least bit bad about it because I know that the process was there and I did my best.”

Away from the field, Anderson found distractions. In New York, he attended the Broadway play Art, starring Alan Alda, twice during one four-day stretch. Following night games, he rented out The Senator Theatre for private screenings of The Truman Show and Saving Private Ryan for friends and teammates.

Anderson also came across a list of the Top 100 English-Language Novels of the 20th Century.

“I hadn't read many of the top 100,” he says. “So I decided to start with number one, which was ‘Ulysses.' I got through about 25 pages of that, then decided I would go to number two. A couple of days later I saw an article in The New York Times entitled, “Why They Invented Cliff's Notes.” There was a picture of ‘Ulysses,' so I didn't feel that bad about not completing it.” “The Great Gatsby,” “Lolita,” and “Heart of Darkness” have been read and “Catch-22” sits on the coffee table in his newly remodeled condominium. After a stint on the disabled list from April 21 to May 8, Anderson began the daunting task of salvaging his season. He dismissed the idea of setting new goals to put a more positive spin on his stat sheet.

“I stopped doing that,” Anderson chuckles, “since I had goals set before the bad start. I found out it wasn't working, thought I'd go a different route. I had all these goals, all these great expectations. All of a sudden, I'm 4-for-63.”

What Anderson did was bat over .270 from that low-water mark, despite the lingering pain of his sternoclavicular. It was an ache that forced Anderson into bad habits at the plate.

“I was really jumping out,” Anderson says. “I was swinging at bad pitches. Ideally you want your mind to be at a certain state - you're relaxed, but you're alert. Your focus isn't on yourself, it's on the ball and the pitcher. When you're hurt you become a little too self-conscious and are sort of feeling your way through the at-bat. No matter how good your swing is, you're not going to hit the ball hard if you swing at bad pitches.

“Because my focus changed and my concentration wasn't where it should be, I wasn't seeing the ball. I thought I was swinging at strikes and I wasn't.”

For the most part, Anderson was not besieged with suggestions about his swing. However, he did receive several words of wisdom in early August. It was a much-needed day off, but Anderson decided to take some batting practice at Camden Yards before the team bus left for BWI and a charter flight to Minnesota. The session began with batting tee work with hitting coach Rick Down.

“He's always been levelheaded about hitting,” Anderson says of Down. “He doesn't get too abstract. He keeps his ideas simple about getting a good pitch to hit and seeing the ball.”

Next, Anderson took swings against bullpen coach Elrod Hendricks. He had only intended to hit for 10 minutes, but word came that the plane had been delayed and he stayed on the field for half an hour.

“Toward the very end, something sort of clicked and I started to feel a better rhythm with my swing,” Anderson says. “I took that into Minnesota and I've been swinging very well since.”

One of the keys to the workout was some advice from Hendricks, who has probably watched Anderson hit professionally longer than anyone. “Elrod has seen me hit for a long time,” says Anderson. “He just said, ‘Get loaded.' Sometimes the best hitting tips are the simplest ones.” Hendricks explains: “When you ‘get loaded' the hands go back automatically. He was trying to lift his leg and take his hands back at the same time. He wasn't loading up properly. I look for little things when a guy is swinging the bat well.”

The following day, Roberto Alomar was in Anderson's hitting group for the first time this season. Alomar has batted behind Anderson for most of his three years as an Oriole, and he has studied the left-hander. From the on-deck circle, he saw Anderson smack a franchise-record 50 home runs in 1996 and witnessed his teammate's first-half skid this year.

“In the beginning I didn't say anything,” says Alomar, “because a lot of people were saying things to him. I noticed that sometimes when he lifts his leg a little bit higher, he stays back longer on the ball. When his leg doesn't go as high, he's quicker and always in front of the ball.

“I told him that whenever he tried to hit the ball to left field, he got underneath the ball. Ever since that day he has really been hitting the ball. The leg is really important to him. If his leg is high, he stays back on the ball and his legs are quicker. That's what I saw.”

That night Anderson had the finest offensive game of his career - two home runs, two doubles and a single. His first-ever five-hit game produced 13 total bases, tying an Oriole record. Anderson had gotten his fifth hit of the year in his 21st game. Another home run came the following night, and soon he had hit in 12 of 13 games (21-for-54 with five HRs and nine RBIs).

“It started to look like a season,” Anderson recalls. “I had hung in there and hung in there.”

Then came the play at the wall that can be traced all the way back to those two HBPs in Detroit. Anderson tracked a deep drive to right-center and jumped at the wall to make what would have been a spectacular grab, but one that he has made countless times.

“It was strange,” he remembers. “I had that ball in my sights, went to jump and the ball didn't end up in my glove.”

Anderson stayed in the game for one pitch, tried to jog and realized he couldn't continue, that the pain in his knee was different than he had experienced when he had banged the spot previously. Anderson was confused as to when he actually hurt his knee. He reviewed tapes and there was no contact with his knee and the wall, and the leg did not twist upon landing. It became clear he injured it on the jump. An MRI revealed a tear in the patella tendon, the area weakened by the tendinitis. The tear may require off-season invasive surgery, though Anderson has yet to make a decision on what he will do.

“It's just weird knowing that I injured myself on the jump, which is what prevented me from jumping to where my body would normally go. That ball should have been in my glove.”

Anderson was so eager to play every day early in his career that he was on the verge of going to Japan. Now, he is reluctant to shut down because of injuries, having played through a broken rib and hand and a phantom case of appendicitis.

“Brady wouldn't know what to do if he wasn't injured,” says teammate Chris Hoiles.

Not surprisingly, Anderson credits Cal Ripken for helping forge his work ethic.

“I'd be crazy not to benefit from being a teammate of Cal's,” says Anderson, “and seeing what he has done - his willingness to put his game on the line every single day, whether he's struggling or injured. He's willing to go out there when the easy way out is to not play.”

But this latest injury is different, one that Anderson deems more dangerous than dealing with the discomfort of playing with a broken bone.

“With my knee it's a little more worrisome,” he says. “The difference between being hurt and being injured is that injury prevents you from doing what you would normally be able to do. I can't jump off this leg. I've probably played with more painful things, but I'm not able to do what I normally do. That's the worst part about it.”

“It's a shame,” says Hendricks, “but it's just the way the year has been going for him. Just when he seems to come out of something, something else happens to him.”

A week after the injury, Anderson was somber: “I'm trying to get through this. And I really don't know how I'm going to do it.”

However, on the last day of August, Anderson hit a ground ball up the middle and was thrown out at first base. Rather than another tough at-bat in a frustrating offensive year, it was perhaps the most gratifying out Anderson had made all season.

“I actually ran hard and I was fairly fast,” he says. “That was very encouraging to me. I was resigned to the fact that my knee wasn't going to improve much the rest of the season. I didn't expect to make that sort of improvement so early. ”