On May 23, 2016, I received the above card. Here is what I
wrote about it on Facebook:
“After
taking the weekend off the Baseball Card Bandit strikes (Ha! Baseball pun!)
again.
Good old Brady Anderson he lasted a little bit with the Red Sox,
a little bit on steroids (allegedly) and a lot in our hearts.
Kudos BCB.”
At the beginning of the 1988 season, the Boston Red Sox were
floundering. Most of the rookies that were inserted during the previous season
were experiencing sophomore slumps and the leftover veterans weren’t doing much
better. For a young squad, they were a dead-ass team and they were going
nowhere, fast.
In the middle of the season General Manager Lou Gorman knew
a change was needed, so he fired field manager John McNamara and replaced him
with Joe Morgan. At the time, the Sox were nine games behind the Detroit Tigers
and the Morgan hire was supposed to last long enough for Gorman and Cardinals pitching
coach Mike Roarke to work out a deal bringing him to Boston.
The Red Sox won Joe Morgan’s first game as a manager and
proceeded to win 12 in a row. They also set a Major League record by winning 24
straight home games in a row too. For a team that was buried at the All-Star
break, a month later the Red Sox were sitting on top of the American League
East standings. Walpole Joe wasn’t going anywhere and Roarke never got a chance
to manage in the bigs.
Now Gorman had to change direction and build for a playoff
run. He sent Anderson, who played in 41 uninspiring games with the Sox at the
beginning of the season, to the Baltimore Orioles for starting pitcher Mike
Boddicker. The Sox sweetened the deal by adding Curt Schilling to the
transaction too.
There are times when you’re over a barrel and you have to do
something, and for Gorman this was one of those times (though it wouldn’t be
the first time he got fleeced by an opposing GM). Boddicker pitched very well
for the Red Sox for the next few years and in 1988 he was slotted behind Roger
Clemens and Bruce Hurst as Boston’s number three pitcher. The Sox stumbled a
bit in September, but held on to get crushed by the Oakland Athletics in four straight
games in the American League Championship series.
Brady Anderson started slowly with the Orioles, this was the
Orioles team that opened the season with 21 straight losses, so there wasn’t a
lot of pressure on anyone to win right now. Anderson played a decent centerfield
but didn’t hit over .231 or slug more than four home runs in the ensuing three
seasons. In 1992, Anderson turned it on becoming an All-Star for the first time
and jacking up his counting stats. He launched homers (21), stole bases (53)
and went from being good-field, no-hit to good-field, good-hit. The Orioles
found themselves a weapon.
The next two years, his numbers stayed about the same:
mid-300s on base and mid-400s for slugging. But in 1996, Anderson went bananas,
slamming 50 home runs on the season. It was a magical season for him, but it
also brought a lot of eyeballs and suspicion.
His previous nine seasons, Anderson never came close to 30
home runs (21 was his high), never mind 50. Where did this power surge come
from? When people talk about the Steroid Era, after you get past the Mark
McGwires, Sammy Sosas and Barry Bondses, Brady Anderson’s name is usually the
next one to be brought up. And I admit that it does look a little fishy. Brady Anderson
was a speedy centerfielder type. He ran well, hit in the mid .260s and showed
flashes of power. How did he hit 50 home runs?
I don’t know. All I know is that he did. If he did take
steroids why did he only do so for one year? He wasn’t a free agent that
season, he couldn’t shop his talent around until after the 1997 season – and he
slumped big time then, only hitting 18 homers and seeing his slugging
percentage tumble by 150 points. Wouldn’t it make sense to keep the juice going
for one more year to quiet the nay-sayers and get an even bigger payday? It’s
not like Major League Baseball even tested for steroids or anything, he could
cycle whenever he felt like he needed a boost and goose his numbers higher and
higher.
I don’t know and I think that’s why I’m not comfortable
tossing him on the steroids pyre with the rest of the known steroids guys.
Baseball is a funny game, every once in a while, players come along and
outperform their career norms and then the next season they turn into a
pumpkin. Before he gained fame as the manager who led the Mets to their last
World Series victory, Davey Johnson hit 43 Ding Dong Johnsons for the Atlanta
Braves in 1973. The following year he hit 15 and the year after that he hit
zero. Prior to 1973, the second baseman’s career high was 18.
Things happen, sometimes the lightening you catch in the
bottle lasts for the full season. Maybe that’s what happened to Brady Anderson.
The closest Anderson came to matching his career high in bombs
was during the 1999 season when he hit 24. He was out of baseball three seasons
later.
Did the Sox make the right move trading Anderson (and
Schilling) for Boddicker? I say yes. Anderson was never going to be allowed to
develop for four seasons in Boston. Fans would have been calling for his head
by the end of the 1990 season. Plus, the Red Sox needed Mike Boddicker in 1988
and 1990. The Athletics lost to two huge underdogs the year that they crushed
the Sox, so even though they looked infallible, they obviously weren’t
unbeatable. Maybe if Clemens got Orel Hershiser or Jose Rijo hot, they could
have snuck passed the A’s and played in the Series.
As far as Schilling goes, he got lit up in his stints with
the Orioles and later the Astros, before he got his shit together with the
Phillies. The Sox share the blame in not recognizing the talent of Schilling
with Baltimore and Houston, but a lion’s share falls on Schilling’s shoulders
too.
The story is, Schilling was messing around in a Houston gym
during the winter when Roger Clemens was working out. Clemens saw what
Schilling was doing and reamed him out and said that he was too good to be that
bad. Schilling took the advice to heart and began to dedicate himself to
pitching and all of the things that go along with it. The following year, he
led the Phillies to the 1993 World Series.
Two quick thoughts:
The Red Sox did a pretty good job of scouting in the early
1980s: Mike Greenwell, Ellis Burks, Jody Reed, Todd Benzinger, Sam Horn, John
Marzano, Brady Anderson, Jeff Bagwell, two-time All Star Scott Cooper, Tim
Naehring, Mo Vaughn, John Valentin, Phil Plantier and John Flaherty all made
the bigs and experienced a bunch sort of success. Schilling was about the only
pitcher the Sox signed during this time that did anything.
I wonder how that compares to the late 60s/early 70s run of
developed players: Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, Dwight Evans, Carlton Fisk, Ben Oglive,
Cecil Cooper, Juan Beniquez, Ernie Whitt and Butch Hobson. Again, not a lot of
pitchers in the mix here. But man, do the Sox scouts know how to pick hitters
or what? Damn.
My parents brought my brother and I to a Sox/Orioles game in
September 1988 and both of us were obsessed with getting autographs. We got to
the park early and were trying to get someone, anyone to sign. My brother being
smaller and more adventurous than me climbed on the Orioles dugout and stuck
his head down and gave his and my baseball to someone for an autograph, who
passed it along to some other guys before giving it back to my brother. I was
excited about one signature: Brady Anderson, nonplussed about another: Joe
Orsulak and upset with my brother for the third: Curt Schilling.
“Why did you get Schilling,” I asked. “He sucks. I’m glad
you got Anderson because he’s going to the Hall of Fame, but we wasted a good
spot on the ball for Schilling.”
Then, as now, I was a bit of a dick AND I act like I do, but
I know nothing about baseball.
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