CHAPTER 1 BRADY’S BUNCH OF BLASTS long-held belief in baseball is that power is the last skill a hitter develops In Brady Anderson’s case power didn’t come for nine seasons Anderson played outfield for the Baltimore Orioles for most of the 1990s With his trademark sideburns and hustle Anderson was a favorite of Orioles fans throughout the decade But Anderson falls into a special class of athletes for whom when you hear their name you think of one amazing achievement It could be a single game a tournament or even a season But for that one moment in the sun these athletes could do no wrong Anderson was more than a one-hit wonder You might argue that he could be better known as a 50-hit wonder That’s because he hit a jaw-dropping 50 home runs in 1996 Brady Anderson watches one of his 50 home runs in 1996
Anderson was an unlikely participant in the home run derby at the 1996 MLB All-Star Game Anderson was not much of a power hitter before that season He had hit only 72 total homers in eight seasons up to that point In 1995 he hit 16 home runs In 1997 he hit 18 But that year in between was one to remember Just 29 games into the 1996 season Anderson had already blasted 15 home runs He had 30 at the All-Star break in early July That helped him get voted into the starting lineup for the American League AL All-Star team Anderson didn’t stay on the same pace in the second half of the season But he didn’t disappear either The Orioles rolled into Toronto for the season’s final series with Anderson sitting at 47 home runs He hit three homers against the Blue Jays in the last four games He hit No 50 in the first inning of the final game of the season That gave him Baltimore’s single-season record for home runs at the time Anderson’s breakout season happened during what is now often referred to as the Steroid Era in Major League Baseball MLB Home run totals spiked in the late 1990s and early 2000s Many players later admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs but Anderson always denied the use of such substances As quickly as Anderson’s power stroke arrived however it disappeared When healthy Anderson remained a productive player for Baltimore but he never approached 50 homers again He retired in 2002 with 210 career home runs nearly a quarter of them coming in that one magical season
