On Player’s Weekend, Tim Anderson will wear his slain friend’s name on the back of his jersey, like a graft over a wound.
Tragedy inspires. It inspires corrections and it inspires faults; epiphanies and slopes of destruction. When Branden Moss was murdered while assisting the victim of a bar fight that spilled into a Tuscaloosa parking lot, Anderson’s universe began spinning at hyper speed.
Moss and Anderson were Godfather’s to each other’s children and close friends since their days at Hillcrest High School in Alabama. That Moss intervened as a good Samaritan offered little consolation to Anderson as he grieved. Moss had been relegated to a vaporous memory, something real and ethereal.
“People say play and try to get your mind off it, but that wasn’t the case,” Anderson said as reported by Colleen Kane of the Chicago Tribune. “I think about him all the time, really. … It’s tough, but I feel like I’m going to get through it. I know he’s always going to be with me.”
Much easier said than done.
leading into 2017 hopes were high and optimism was abundant on Anderson. After batting .283 in his rookie season and earning Rookie of the Year votes, Anderson seemed poised to cement himself among the White Sox young core.
The Alabama native struggled in April posting a .204/.237/.301 slash line but appeared to recover in the following month. Moss was gunned down over the first weekend in May and Anderson managed to swing his way through the rest of the month with a .319/.333/.500 line.
Denial is the first stage of grief and perhaps the distraction of a major-league season provided proper sequestration from the realities of a separate life at home. Yet, June offered a tripwire for Anderson.
While fighting through another dip in his offensive production, compounded by unusual defensive blunders, Anderson was ejected from his first major league game in June and managed a meager .213 batting average. An homage to his fallen friend was omnipresent on the middle infielder’s cap with a silver “Bmoss” scribbled by the bill, but Anderson’s loss was tearing at the fabric of his being.
Baseball is not a game for the weak. It requires a pugnacious attitude with delicate repose. Toughness is an essential accouterment in the player’s tool bag but not the kind displayed on a football field.
Mental toughness is a prerequisite. Enduring what the game throws at you on a daily basis is difficult enough, but add a life away from the people that love you most and the constant reminder that success is fleeting in a game governed by numbers and a balance sheet, and it is easy to toss your fate up to the Gods.
The reality of his other life may have become all too evident in the middle of the summer. Anderson’s slide in July continued as he bottomed out at a .198 batting average. Then a second loss, unsurprising though it may have been, rattled the youngster.
Todd Frazier was traded to the New York Yankees. I spoke to Frazier in the offseason and he named Anderson as one person he swung his heavy arm around.
“…he’s been following my lead,” Frazier said in January. “He’s a professional as it is and he just needs to learn a few more things and he’ll be great.”
All players need a mentor and it seems Frazier was the lighthouse for Anderson’s rocky seas.
Still, the loss lingers.
Anderson started seeing a counselor to lift him above the grief, an intelligent and humble decision to move past the numb feeling of loss.
“You don’t realize how numb you are until it starts going away,” Anderson told Dan Hayes of CSN Chicago. “I definitely think I was numb and I feel a lot more like myself now that I’ve been talking to a counselor and getting it off my chest.”
In July, Rick Hahn said, “I don’t think I’ve seen a player in my time with the club that’s been as affected by off-the-field occurrences as Timmy has this year.”
After the White Sox’ faithful gesture in the offseason to extend Anderson’s contract and pay him handsomely over the next six years, Hahn’s comments offered another warm embrace – and he has rewarded the club with an offensive resurgence.
Since jawing with Toronto’s Marcus Stroman on Aug. 2 that lead to a benches-clearing mill around the infield, Anderson has found his stroke.
Over the 18-day stretch from Aug. 2 to Aug. 20, Anderson batted .287 (21 for 73) with five home runs. He went hitless in only two of those games while lacing two seven-game hitting streaks. After two hitless nights, Anderson re-emerged on Wednesday night as the hero, driving in the game-winning run in dramatic fashion.
Anderson’s 2017 story can’t be told with heat maps, a spreadsheet and vast peripherals. He is a human and his story is written in the sweat and emotions leaked from his soul. His success this season is a testament to enduring, not thriving. His story is unique in that it has happened to him.
Others have lost and the baseball community bears tragedy on a regular basis, just as any other professional sports league. But the personal struggle is often overshadowed by the gritty demands for production and fan satisfaction. The human suffers for the athlete’s cause.
But the human will heal a little more on Players Weekend. Anderson has chosen to honor his fallen friend by having his name stitched on the back of his jersey. I’ll let Anderson tell you the rest.
Whether Anderson has found peace is difficult to gather. I imagine the offseason will be a welcomed opportunity to heal the human beneath the uniform because the pain of losing a dear friend doesn’t evaporate like a puddle in the street, it is a tide pool that swells with the rising sea.
