Dodgers' Brett Anderson is determined to put bad luck, injuries behind him

LOS ANGELES – Brett Anderson has played in 30 baseball games over the past 3½ years and 43 over the past 4½. It'd be more if not for the injuries, mishaps and other unfortunate incidents, not the least of which was the Tommy John surgery, all of which has convinced him that as much as he loves sharks, and he really does love sharks, that he should not ever allow himself to be dipped into the ocean in a shark tank, much as he would love to be dipped into the ocean in a shark tank. Because he does love sharks.

See, there's a point, after the elbow, the oblique, the ankle-foot thing, the back, the finger, all the missed days and weeks and months, when a young man may decide he's not altogether invincible. Or even particularly lucky. So, yeah, people climb into cages and lower themselves into chummed waters and emerge with cool photos and shark breath on their clothes and still all of their limbs. They love sharks too.

"Me?" he said. "I'd probably have my arm bit off."

In that case, 30 baseball games over 3½ years would seem like a solid workload.

Anderson, the 27-year-old left-hander, is scheduled to start for the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday night in Arizona. It will be his first game since Aug. 5, the last of his eight starts for the Colorado Rockies over a little more than four months. He came out of that game after three innings and a little more than a week later underwent back surgery.

Thing is with Anderson, he can be a pretty terrific pitcher, inclined when upright to turn his sinker-slurvy stuff into groundballs, strikeouts and strike zone command. Derek Norris, who caught Anderson nine times over the 2012 and 2013 seasons when both were in Oakland, called him, "One of the best left-handed arms I've seen."

Norris also began a sentence, "When he's healthy …", and that's pretty much the thing with Anderson. Finish it anyway you want. It's why the Rockies traded for him and paid him $8 million, and why the well-heeled Dodgers signed him for $10 million (and another $4 million based on innings pitched), and why he's got a place on a roster and in a rotation that carries the World Series as, if not an obligation, certainly an expectation.

Anderson doesn't seem to dwell much on so many nights spent watching baseball games when he could have been playing in them. These things happen, and what's left is to recover, rehab and show up again. But when there's so much of that going on, you wonder what a guy does with all his time. You know, learn the guitar, become nationally ranked in Candy Crush, take up Civil War re-enacting, something…

"I'm such a baseball nut, a baseball nerd, it's tough to be drawn to other things," he said. "I sort of focus on watching baseball."

He has his own team to watch. Then, his father, Frank, was the head coach at Oklahoma State for eight years, through 2012, and currently is the pitching coach at the University of Houston. So he watches Houston.

"It's what I like to do," he said. "Even if I wanted to escape it, I couldn't."

Anderson said he reads a little, usually to "look up things." He likes animals, so he reads about them. Some history stuff occasionally. And sharks.

"I like sharks," he said. "So I read about sharks."

Mostly, it seems, he works to return to the mound. And he heals. And he waits. And he tries not to think about the lost starts, the mostly lost seasons.

"I'm only 27," he said. "You can look at that 'til you're blue in the face. Won't change. Then you look at Clayton Kershaw. In a perfect world, that coulda been me."

It's been less than perfect, which doesn't, however, change today. It doesn't change Friday, when Anderson will take the ball again, feeling strong and healthy and more than hopeful. He has made as many as 30 starts once, as a rookie in 2009. He made 19 starts in 2010 and his ERA was 2.80. That pitcher – his ERA was 2.91 in those eight starts last season for the Rockies, four of them at Coors Field – surely lives in that left arm still, still attached, if only the rest of him would cooperate.

"I gotta put it all behind me," he said. "There's still some time. To myself, to fans, to my team, I can prove I'm the pitcher I think I am."

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