I Was Just Thinking...

How do you know when you run out of invisible ink?

That’s one of many of life’s great questions posed by former Major League pitcher and current Philadelphia Phillies broadcaster Larry Andersen.

Andersen was known as a character during his 17-year MLB career, but when he transitioned to the broadcast booth in 1997, he ramped it up. He teamed up with legendary Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas, who knew how to capitalize on Andersen’s reputation.

Kalas initiated “Shallow Thoughts with Larry Andersen” as a takeoff of an old “Saturday Night Live” skit. It was a hit right from the start, as Kalas was the perfect “straight man.”

“I would throw out a ‘shallow thought,’” Andersen said, “and Harry's response was usually a low-key, ‘Yeah, that's great.”

Why does sour cream have an expiration date?

Andersen told me many of his famous sayings just popped into his head in his many years in the bullpen. He had 699 career appearances with six different teams. He had one career start with Seattle in 1982. That was an emergency start when scheduled starter Jim Beattie came up with back spasms while warming up.

Andersen pitched 4 2/3 innings and the Mariners led the Boston Red Sox 5-3. Rich Gedman hit a two-out double in the fifth inning and Seattle manager Rene Lachemann brought in a reliever.

“I was a little upset Lache wouldn’t let me try to get one more out,” Andersen said. “I said, ‘You know, we’re the Seattle Mariners.’ It wasn't like we were vying for first place. We were probably trying to stay out of last place. He couldn’t let me finish that inning?”

The role of reliever fit Andersen better than being a starter.

“Relief was best for my game,” he said. “I didn't have a whole big arsenal, I could throw a lot of pitches, but none of them were very good. Relieving helped me settle in. My last seven years in the big leagues I was a one-pitch pitcher. I basically threw sliders. I threw cutters, sliders and a bigger slider, but that was three pitches out of one pitch.”

But there’s another reason the role fit.

“If you just sit there in the bullpen and think about who you’re going to face when you come in, you can drive yourself nuts. I'm already a basket case enough without pushing it any further. I really just wanted to have fun.”

What do you pack Styrofoam in?

Andersen is very self-deprecating, but he had talent. He finished his career with better than a .500 record (40-39), though he’ll quickly add “just barely.” But he had a career 3.15 ERA. He was drafted in the seventh round in 1971 by Cleveland. He made his MLB debut in 1975 and spent the next few seasons going up and down from the minors to the big-league club.

He was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates prior to the 1980 season and then played two seasons (1981 and 1982) with Seattle before signing with the Phillies in 1983. He played three seasons in Philadelphia before he caught his big break.

He was released.

He signed with the Houston Astros, where he came in contact with pitching coach Les Moss, who had spent a number of years in the majors as a catcher.

“I was a little leery about listening to another catcher as a pitching coach, but I give Les all the credit in the world,” Anderson said. “He put me through some different drills, even though I struggled for the first month and a half in Houston. He got me straightened out and the rest is history. I owe so much to him.”

One of the things Moss told him was to abandon the fastball, which he had trouble throwing effectively.

If Andersen was facing a “good fastball hitter,” he wondered if he should throw him a bad fastball.

His five seasons in Houston were his best years, baseball-wise. And then came what he—and most of baseball—called “the Bagwell trade” in August 1990.

The Astros traded Andersen to Boston for then minor league but future Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell. When I suggested that Boston got fleeced in the deal, Andersen said, “Yeah, big time.”

Andersen did make the postseason in 1990, which he said was the highlight of his career. He played in the postseason four times—in 1983 with the Phillies, 1986 with the Astros, 1990 with the Red Sox and 1993 with the Phillies again.

“That's what you play for,” he said. “Every year, you start spring training, no matter what team you're on, thinking you're going to be in the World Series. If you don’t have that mindset, you've already lost.

“So no matter where I was, the goal was to get to the playoffs, and then from there, get to the World Series and then win a World Series. I wasn't able to do that, but I did I did get to the World Series twice.”

After Boston, he spent two years in San Diego before re-signing with the Phillies in 1993 and 1994, the season that ended with the lockout. He finished the season with some arm issues, so Phillies general manager Lee Thomas asked him to cross the picket line in the spring of 1995 to show that his arm was healed. He reluctantly agreed.

When the lockout ended, Andersen didn’t want to go through another spring training, so he asked Thomas if there were other opportunities. Thomas offered him a player-coach position with the team’s Double-A affiliate in Reading, Pa.

Andersen thought it was a good idea, so he accepted. During a road trip to Akron, Ohio, on a Saturday night in the middle of the summer, he and a teammate went out after the game. He’s not proud of it, but he said he was “over-served” and showed up at the ballpark with a pounding headache.

It was not only in the upper 90s with high humidity, but the home team was celebrating “bat day,” and they gave away the toy bats to all the kids. The kids kept pounding those bats against the metal bleachers. We’ll let him pick it up from there.

“Bill Dancy, our manager said, ‘Hey, Andy, I think maybe you should go put your spikes on because we're a little short on pitching. If our starter gets knocked around, we're in trouble. We might need you today.’ I said, ‘Well, that's not gonna happen.’ He said, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘Because I just retired.’”

Another one of Andersen’s favorite sayings is, “You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.”

He actually loved the coaching part, because he loved helping the young pitchers. He said that he still enjoys that, even though he’s been in the broadcast booth for almost three decades. “They frown on it now if you don’t have an analytics background,” he said.

But that doesn’t stop him. He learned the game from some of the all-time greats who were also his teammates, Hall of Famers like Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Tony Gwynn and Gaylord Perry, and he loves “paying it forward.”

He interviewed for the Phillies pitching coach position in 1997 but didn’t get the job. He was offered the job of pitching coach in Triple-A, but he didn’t want it. So he accepted the open color analyst position with the Phillies radio network, where he partnered with Kalas.

He said the best part of being a broadcaster is staying around the game. That career has served him well, both professionally and in reputation. In 2012, he was named No. 12 on MLB Network’s “top 25 personalities in baseball.” He considers it an honor.

“I was gonna have fun doing whatever I was doing, whether it was playing baseball or whatever,” he said. “That's my personality. I like to have a good time.”

Even though he only does home games for the Phillies these days, he’s still getting attention with his funny sayings. With Kalas, he sometimes had to work on them, but most of them just popped into his head. He now is partnering with Hog Island Press (HogIslandPress.com) on a line of T-shirts. He also has some logo gear, the funds from which go to “Transformation To Recovery,” a faith-based recovery program through his church in South Philadelphia. You can find that gear and support the cause at transformationtorecovery.org.

That’s a noble cause, and one Andersen is most proud of. But he still has those “shallow thoughts.” Here’s one more example.

Why do people stand in the middle of the seventh inning and sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” when they’re already there?