Those are fantastic numbers by any standards.  And, yet, Garrett Anderson is hardly the first name that comes to mind when discussing the best players in Major League Baseball over the past twenty years.

Garrett Anderson is trying to spend at least one more season in an strange-looking uniform. After 15 seasons with the Angels (and one with the Braves), Anderson is currently in camp with the Dodgers.

Anderson, whose debut came at the end of the 1994 season and whose entire career prior to last season was spent in Anaheim with the California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels, is headed back home to his native California this spring after one season with the Atlanta Braves.  That much is certain.

But, if he is on a major league roster when spring training camp breaks, it will be with the Los Angeles Dodgers now instead of the Angels.

Always one of the classiest guys in the game, his understated style and lack of self-promotion (nickname: G.A.) kept him off many fans’ radar over the years.  And though nothing about Anderson’s status as a non-roster invitee is going to change that, he continues to exude class and grace in the twilight of his career.

Check out this column in today’s Los Angeles Times from T.J. Simers.  Never known for his sentimentality, even Simers can’t help but portray Anderson in a positive light.

The Dodgers should find a way to keep G.A. around this season.  His influence would mean everything to an organization in dire need of as many positive stories as possible, considering the nastiness playing out in the owner’s suite.

And even if Anderson has played his final game, his legacy is complete and requires no apologies.  More proof that the good guys do win sometimes.

But no news will be bigger than today’s announcement that Peter Gammons is leaving ESPN at the end of the year to join MLB Network and MLB.com as an on-air and online analyst and, additionally, to join NESN as a regular studio analyst, reporter and online contributor.

ESPN can spin this any way they want, but those double-duties don’t add up to the “less demanding schedule” that ESPN’s executive vice president, Norby Williamson, claims was a large part of the reason for Gammons’ decision.

Peter Gammons, circa more than a few years ago

Peter Gammons is, simply, the best baseball journalist of his day and while his decision to join ESPN in 1989 was completely understandable, so is his decision to move on here in 2009. 

ESPN may be the worldwide leader, but the serious sports fan has long given up on ESPN to deliver actual knowledge and insight and Gammons certainly appreciates the opportunity to once again do just that in his new dual roles.

Gammons had a major health scare in 2006 and it would appear that, like most who survive life-threatening ordeals, Gammons has decided to make substantive change for the better and this professional move certainly exemplifies that philosophy.

Welcome to the rest of your life, Peter.  With ESPN in your rearview mirror, life ahead looks pretty darn good.  For you and for us.

But those are all too easy in the end.  What you really need to do is check out Joe Posnanski’s 2009 MLB “Anti-Award” Winners.

Posnanski, writing for SI.com, has put together an inspired list that identifies not only the Least Valuable Player candidates in each league, but also the Anti-Cy Young Award to go along with the not-so-great Manager of the Year.

Fortunately, 2009 yielded an exceptional number of candidates and the “winners” clearly earned their status. 

I won’t ruin the surprise by providing the results for you here.  Click on that link above for the details. 

But I’ll give you one hint.  The two LVPs have about $120 million remaining on their combined contracts.  Yes, $120 million. 

Ensuring that the bar has been set incredibly high for next season’s Anti-Award Winners.  And fans in Toronto and Chicago can only hope that a repeat performance is not in the offing.

We’ll get to Jackie Robinson, Michael Jordan, & LeBron James in a moment, but first there is this.

For the non-sports fan, the notion of “retiring” numbers must seem a little silly.  And maybe it should for those of us who do pay attention to these things. 

But for the record, the first professional sports athlete with a retired number appears to have been Ace Bailey of the Toronto Maple Leafs on February 14, 1934.  For more on that incredible story, click here).

And since the day that Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe announced to the crowd at Maple Leaf Gardens that “No other player on a Maple Leaf hockey team will ever again wear the number 6“, the sports world has seen a veritable explosion in retired jerseys.

Bringing us to today’s news. 

Of all the jersey numbers to be retired in the world of professional sports, none has had a more profound impact than that of Major League Baseball’s mandate in 1997 to retire the number 42 among all of its member clubs. 

The significance of the gesture, retiring the number worn by the immortal Jackie Robinson, was to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the breaking of baseball’s color barrier.  It was a bold strike of genius, to be certain, for Commissioner Bud Selig and the clubs of MLB and was universally applauded.

Not quite as genius, and much-less universally applauded, was the announcement by LeBron James last night that he was giving up his Cleveland Cavalier #23 jersey at the end of the season and was asking other NBA players to do the same in honor of all-time great Michael Jordan, who famously wore that number with the Chicago Bulls during his stellar career. 

James’ logic goes something like this: “If you see 23, you think about Michael Jordan.  You see game-winning shots, you think about Michael Jordan; you see guys fly through the air, you think about Michael Jordan; you see fly kicks, you think about Michael Jordan. He did so much, it has to be recognized, and not just by putting him in the Hall of Fame.”

Ummm, OK.

LeBron James is "retiring" his #23 at the end of this season. Will the rest of the NBA follow?

Orlando Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy was asked about LeBron’s decision to “start a petition” for the league-wide retirement of Jordan’s number. 

Here was his response: “It’s a nice gesture, but he (Jordan) is not Jackie Robinson. Baseball did it because it had historical significance. There actually were guys before Michael who could play the game. Then you should retire numbers that (Bill) Russell, Wilt (Chamberlain), and certainly Oscar (Robertson) wore. I understand LeBron didn’t grow up watching those guys, but still.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.  I can’t understand the logic behind this one at all.  James is concerned because Jordan “can’t get the logo” (designed around the image of the great Jerry West), but there’s got to be a better way of honoring his hero. 

To be fair, Jordan is probably the hero of every player in the modern NBA – and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

But a leaguewide number retirement should be reserved for players with the social impact of a Jackie Robinson and those players are few and far between.  Michael Jordan does not fall into that category and it’s likely that no NBA player ever will, LeBron James included.

Back to Van Gundy for the last (but, probably not final) word on this one: “Michael was a great player, and if the NBA wants to decide that every other team in the league has to worship him, then that’s up to them. Would I be for that? No.”

Unrelated items?  In most ways, yes.  But, in a most important way, the World Series, the Bay Bridge, and the month of October will forever be intertwined.

SI.com revisits the effects of the Loma Prieta Earthquake, which struck twenty years ago this month (on October 17th, 1989) just as the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s were preparing to start Game 3 of the World Series at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.

While the A’s swept the Series that year (their lone Series victory during the infamous Bash Brothers era), it was an anticlimatic finish to a literally phenomenal convergence of events and happenstance. 

Hopefully, the Series with a footnote will remain a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.  And the only earthquakes that will affect the Series this fall would be the seismic reading of the celebration coming out of the Delaware Valley should the Phillies convert this 1-0 Series lead into a repeat World Series Championship. 

Stay tuned.

And while the limited English-speaking skills of the veteran superstar of the Los Angeles Angels have kept his amazing career unnoticed by most, odds are pretty good that he’s perfectly content without all of the attention.

Meanwhile, his performance in this year’s playoffs has been quietly redemptive for the 35-year old slugger who has certainly heard the whispers about his theoretically declining skills.

Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times piece on Vladdy today, “Angels’ Vladimir Guerrero has come through in October”, says it all.

Where will the free agent-to-be wind up next season as he winds down his career?  That topic is for another day as Guerrero and the Angels look to extend their season tonight in game 6 of the ALCS against the Yankees in the Bronx.

Check out the official coverage (and highlights) of the Angels’ 5-4 victory in 11 innings over the Yankees.  Unsung Jeff Mathis becomes a household name for at least one day as Anaheim keeps their World Series hopes alive by winning this crucial third game of the series after New York took the first two in the Bronx over the weekend.

Jeff Mathis (and about 50,000 of his closest friends) celebrate today in Anaheim

And, not to be outdone, the Phillies followed that up with their own 5-4 victory over the Dodgers on Jimmy Rollins’ 2-out, 2-run double in the bottom of the ninth.  The Phils now hold a commanding 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series and move ever so much closer to becoming the first National League team to repeat as World Series winners since the 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds.

Jimmy Rollins gets a thoroughly-deserved hero's welcome

I couldn’t help but be worried about the playoffs lacking drama after the drab Divisional Series that kicked it off earlier this month. 

Fortunately, based on the storylines developing out of both League Championship Series, it looks like the remainder of the baseball schedule (stretching endlessly into November this season) has the potential to go down as one of the all-timers.

But only the most astute baseball fans living outside of the greater Denver area (celebrating the Colorado Rockies’ second playoff appearance in three seasons with the unfortunately named Rocktober ’09) recognize that the individual with perhaps the most proficient career statistically is none other than the Rockies’ own Todd Helton.

Todd Helton

Helton, who has spent his entire 13-year career in Denver, is just the fifth player in major league history with at least 500 doubles, a .325 career batting average and 320 home runs.  Those other four?  Just some chumps named Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, and Babe Ruth.

For another measure of his offensive prowess, note that only 25 players in the history of the game have a higher career batting average than Helton’s .328 – and most of those played pre-WWII, in a much different statistical era.

As his manager Jim Tracy points out in the Chicago Tribune’s brief profile of Helton: “In order to fully appreciate this player, you have to either play in the same division as him or have an opportunity to be around him on a day in, day out basis.” 

Toiling in a market like Denver, Helton’s audience in that regard has always been minimal, affording him fewer chances than other superstars of his day who have made their way to the more high-profile baseball towns.

And as Troy Renck of the Denver Post opined in his feature of Helton prior to the commencement of the Rockies’ current NL Divisional Playoff Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, Todd Helton is the Rockies.  Check out Renck’s piece for a great appreciation of what makes Helton special from the perspective of those who do get to the opportunity to witness him day in and day out.

Who knew that the one-time backup to Heath Shuler and Peyton Manning at the University of Tennessee would become one of the greatest baseball players of all-time?  Root for those other guys if you must, but be sure to acknowledge that the oft-unsung Helton compares favorably to any of the best players of his generation. 

And, at age 36, he’s not done yet, whether or not the Rockies’ 2009 season extends beyond this first round.

With one major exception.  The Detroit Tigers managed to play mediocre baseball just long enough to ensure a one-game playoff for the AL Central title on Tuesday against the Minnesota Twins, who won 16 of their last 20 games over the last three weeks of the season to match the Tigers’ 86-76 overall record.

Gametime is 5:07pm (ET) on TBS.

Amazingly, this is only the ninth one-game tiebreaker in major league baseball history to decide a postseason participant, but as MLB.com points out in its review of play-in games of the past, this is actually the third straight season to require a tiebreaker.  And the second straight season with an extra tilt for Minnesota.

Last season’s loss in the 163rd game to the Chicago White Sox is certain to be on the minds of the Twins when they take the field on Tuesday.  In fact, the rules of the tiebreaker were actually changed after that game to negate the necessity for a coin-flip to decide home-field advantage.  Head-to-head competition is now, rightfully, the deciding factor. 

Minnesota was forced to travel to Chicago last season despite their victory in the head-to-head series with the White Sox and will now benefit from the rule change after taking this season’s series from the Tigers, 11-7.

After a month’s worth of mostly dull baseball, it’s a bonus to see the play-in game create some last-minute excitement.  The Division Series get started on Wednesday and Thursday with the New York Yankees hosting the winner of Tuesday’s tiebreaker, and the Los Angeles Angels hosting the Boston Red Sox in the American League, while the Philadelphia Phillies welcome the Colorado Rockies and the St. Louis Cardinals travel to Los Angeles to take on the Dodgers.

Let’s hope for some compelling storylines and great action.  Tuesday’s game at the Metrodome would be a good place to start.

But here’s the deal.  The opening of the season is like walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet on an empty stomach.  And, even with today’s first NFL Sunday of the season, there’s good reason to start digesting some of it before commenting on how the Swedish meatballs compare to the stir-fry or deciding which of 25 different desserts to try. 

There is plenty of time to write about football.  And plenty of other notable non-football items to discuss, including today’s epic milestone reached by the incomparable Ichiro Suzuki.

Having just passed the 2,000 hit milestone within the week, Ichiro made history today by becoming the first player in Major League history to have nine consecutive 200-hit seasons, adding stature to the record by accomplishing the feat in the first nine seasons of his major league career with the Seattle Mariners (after nine years of professional ball in Japan).

MLB.com continues to be the go-to site for tracking history-making moments (in sharp contrast to the often sub-standard attempts made by other leagues on their websites), and Ichiro’s record is no exception.  MLB has created a “Chasing History” section dedicated to Ichiro which provides a great overview, including features, interviews, video, and a relevant statistical view of the 200-hit record.

When Ichiro began his career here, American baseball fans had no idea about this ballplayer with the rock-star status in his native Japan and, though baseball insiders everywhere believed that he could make it in MLB, nobody could have predicted the Hall of Fame career that he has put together during his time in the Pacific Northwest.

In an era of unprecedented long-ball prowess, Ichiro has undoubtedly crafted the greatest offensive career of anyone this decade who did not rely on power – though his 82 career home runs are nothing to dismiss, either.  And, for my money, his all-around game makes him perhaps the most exciting player to spend your hard-earned money on to see perfect his craft at the ballpark.

I can only imagine that those who see him every day are alternately amazed and, yet naturally, immune to experiencing Ichiro’s greatness.  Witnessing his career unfold day after day can make it hard to see the bigger picture of the totality of what he has been able to accomplish.

That’s why it is so refreshing to read Larry Stone’s commentary today in The Seattle Times.  With the proper perspective on the “major-league institution, fast becoming a legend” who wears that Mariners uniform every day, Stone lays out exactly what makes Ichiro so special. 

Despite beginning his MLB career at the age of 27, Ichiro is “indisputably, a hit machine, of a vintage that will itself stand the test of time”.

Be hopeful that Ichiro, 36 years old next month, can maintain his health to make a run at the 3,000 hit club, an exclusive group of merely 27 of the best hitters to play the game.  Joining that group would put Ichiro squarely in the class of baseball royalty.  Not that his destiny is anywhere short of the Hall of Fame, even if he chose to retire today.

And, by all means, be sure to see Ichiro for yourself before he chooses to sail the seas back to his homeland, whenever that may be.  He is simply a one-of-a-kind ballplayer whose career is not likely to be replicated again during any of our lifetimes.