Appreciate Garret Anderson's greatness – even if late Angels star strived to lay low

It would be a bit much to call Garret Anderson the last of his kind. That would draw too much attention to a guy who ducked the spotlight at every turn. Anderson’s 17-year career is an almost perfect statement of both his greatness and his ability to deflect any attention toward his simple and highly trained focuses: His family, his commitment to play every single day, his ability to rake better than almost any other player in one of the game’s most potent offensive eras.

Looking for a guy who broke open Game 7 of the World Series with a bases-clearing double? That would be Anderson, whose rope into the right field corner off Livan Hernández launched the Anaheim Angels to their only World Series title in 2002, over Barry Bonds’ San Francisco Giants . How about a player whose metronomic production churned out 1,146 hits between 1998 and 2003, trailing only Hall of Famers Derek Jeter and Todd Helton?

A Home Run Derby champion? An All-Star MVP? That was Anderson in 2003, where he outdueled Albert Pujols in the Derby finals.

Anderson, who died stunningly at 53, was a doubles hitter in an era defined by the long ball. He hit 261 of them in that glorious peak from 1998 to ’03, second in that span and again sandwiched by Hall of Famers in Helton and Jeff Kent. Of course, all the while Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and eventually Bonds were re-defining the home run record books, shrinking ballparks and commanding attention in a manner that didn’t seem real.