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Alexander: Garret Anderson was a pro’s pro

April 17, 2026

Garret Anderson has been described as an Angels “legend” in the last day or so, following his untimely death Thursday night, and that’s true in one sense, not so much in another. To be a legend, in most cases, you have to put yourself out front. Anderson preferred to stay in the background, or at least on the fringes, and yet he still had an outsized impact.

Anderson’s sudden passing at the age of 53, following what was described as a “medical emergency” at his Newport Beach home, reminds us of the numbers he posted and their effect on winning in 17 big league seasons, all but two as an Angel.

And it reminds us that while there were a lot of memorable personalities on the club that brought Anaheim its only World Series championship in 2002, the guy in left field who did most of his talking with his bat and his glove not only helped get the Angels there but had one of the biggest moments of all in hoisting that championship pennant that still flies at Angel Stadium.

In that championship season, Anderson led baseball with 56 doubles, hit .306 with an .871 OPS, 29 home runs and 123 RBI, made his first All-Star team, won a Silver Slugger award and finished fourth in American League MVP voting. That was part of a four-year span from 2000 to 2003 in which he drove in 479 runs with 121 homers and 184 doubles

Yet when you thought about those Angels you probably thought first about Tim Salmon, Darin Erstad or Troy Glaus. Or David Eckstein, the pesky leadoff guy. Or Francisco Rodriguez and Troy Percival, leaders of a lights-out bullpen. Or Scott Spiezio, whose three-run thunderbolt into the right field box seats in Game 6 of the World Series against San Francisco started the comeback from a 3-2 series deficit that led to those looks of shocked amazement among long-time Angels employees the next night.

Anderson just did his job with quiet effectiveness, that year and each of the 15 seasons he wore an Angel uniform (counting his five games as a September callup in 1994). In that 2002 postseason he had an 11-game hitting streak and hit safely in all seven World Series games, and his three-run double in the third inning of Game 7 broke a 1-1 tie and turned out to be the game-winning/series-winning hit.

All these years later? Spiezio’s hit is probably the one people still remember most.

“My timing is terrible,” Anderson told the Register’s Cheryl Rosenberg Neubert the following spring.

His reaction after that memorable Game 7, with the Commissioner’s Trophy firmly in the Angels’ possession? When Salmon tried to hand the trophy to him during the presentation, he shied away and instead urged Salmon to take it on a victory lap so the fans could share the moment.

He watched the on-field celebration along with his family in front of the Angels’ dugout. And he didn’t fling himself into the mad clubhouse celebration, but instead savored the triumph in a back dining room, emerging only briefly. He told reporters he still had trouble believing they’d won it – and in that, he expressed sentiments that lots of those longtime employees were feeling.

“Things like this, you’ll believe it sometime,” he told reporters, including The Press-Enterprise’s Andrew Baggarly, that night. “I don’t know if I’ll ever really feel it. It’s a weird feeling. If I ever do, I’ll let you guys know. Obviously, there’s enough proof out there now.”

Considering the state of the Angels more than two decades later, those moments still seem like something out of Fantasyland. (Pun intended, since the Angels were still under Disney ownership at the time.)

But that was part of a magical era for the Angels, who would follow that championship year with five postseason appearances in a six-year span after Arte Moreno completed his purchase of the team in 2004.

Anderson, a fourth-round draft choice by the Angels out of Kennedy High in Granada Hills, finished his career (including 2009 with Atlanta and 2010 in 80 games with the Dodgers) with 2,529 hits, 287 home runs, 1,385 RBI. In 2002 and ’03 he had his two highest WAR totals (5.1 and 4.0), and in both seasons he led baseball in doubles, won the Silver Slugger award and drew MVP votes.

Sparky Anderson, among others, predicted early on that Garret Anderson would win a batting championship. He never did, but much of that was because he changed his style early on to emphasize home runs and run production, utilizing tips from hitting coach George Hendrick and teammate Mo Vaughn, among others.

As Anderson told the Register’s Bill Plunkett during an August 2003 interview, when he was within striking distance of the American League lead in batting average, he wasn’t tempted to solely chase hits “because I want to stay the type of hitter that I am. I evolved into the type of hitter I am because I wanted to be a run producer. I don’t want to go back.”

Earlier that season, talking about his approach to hitting, he told the Register’s Steve Bisheff: “When I first came up, I was just swinging away, trying to show them I had enough ability to stay up here. … I started working on hitting for power in 1999 and 2000. My average might have suffered a bit, but I learned how to hit with power. Now my average is back to .300 and I’m also hitting with more power.”

Also in 2003, Anderson accepted an invitation to participate in the Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game in Chicago – and wound up winning the thing, beating ex-Angel teammate Jim Edmonds of the Cardinals in the semifinals and edging future Angel Albert Pujols in the final.

“It’s yet another experience in baseball, and I want all the experiences that I can get in this game,” he said then.

The next night, Anderson earned All-Star MVP honors by going 3 for 4 with a home run and two RBIs. Only one other player had done the Home Run Derby/All-Star MVP double: Cal Ripken, in 1991. That should have gained him more attention, right?

But Anderson wasn’t flashy, at the plate or in the field. In fact, he was aware of the criticism he got for not diving for more balls in left field – and noted some surprise that people considered it news when he did dive for one, for the final out in the Angels’ victory in Game 3 of the 2002 AL Championship Series against Minnesota.

As he put it at the time, after not only making that diving catch but racing to embrace center fielder Erstad: “I’ve never been in the postseason before.”

But maybe that was what made Garret Anderson what he was, a pro’s pro – not flashy, but during those years of Angels’ success absolutely dependable.

jalexander@scng.com

Angels legend Garret Anderson dies at 53

Orange County Register

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Alexander: Garret Anderson was a pro’s pro

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