Starting point
The biggest pitcher in the smallest Little League stared at the catcher’s mitt, reared back and fired.
He watched in horror as the ball flew from his cannon of an arm, sailing toward the batter. ‘Move!’ he screamed in his mind.
As the ball pelted the batter, the crowd turned and stared at R.J. Anderson, the kid who always stood out in little Plainville, Conn., because there was nothing plain about him. He could throw the ball harder and faster and farther than the other kids. He was so tall, but when they stared — he hated the stares — he longed to be small.
After that Little League game, he sobbed to his father, Robin, and said he never wanted to pitch again.
‘He always wanted to be normal,’ Robin said. ‘He really didn’t want to be looked at as better than the team.’
Even now, as the starting quarterback of the Syracuse football team, Anderson tries to hide under a cloak of deferred praise. He cringes when you mention his statistics or — don’t dare — compare him to Donovan McNabb.
When Anderson and the Orangemen play at Brigham Young tonight, it’ll be the first time since 1998 that SU has entered a season with a definitive starting quarterback. The loss of 1,200-yard rusher James Mungro could require Anderson to spearhead the offense, but he insists that he’s ‘not going to do anything out of character.’
He’ll stick with that unspectacular, mistake-prevention style that helped limit him to just two interceptions last season. He calls it ‘an R.J.-Anderson mentality,’ and it lets him blend in — just the way he likes it.
***
Deborah Anderson was six months pregnant with Robin Jr., her first son whom she’d later call R.J., when her husband dropped a Nerf football and a wiffleball bat into the crib.
Athletics were entrenched in the Anderson home. Robin Sr. played running back at Connecticut in the 1970s, and two of Deborah’s brothers played college football.
When Anderson was 5, his father brought him to watch Pop Warner football practices. As the older players sprinted, the precocious youngster would run along next to them on the sideline.
‘And he’d beat half of them,’ Robin said.
At age 12, Anderson won a regional Punt, Pass and Kick competition at Foxboro Stadium.
As an eighth-grader, he weighed 160 pounds, 20 pounds too heavy for midget football. So he picked up basketball, one of three varsity sports he’d play in high school. The following year, Plainville’s varsity football coaches decided to make him their starter. Anderson wanted none of it.
‘One day, I sat down with him, and he was in tears,’ said Robin, who coached Plainville’s freshman team at the time. ‘He didn’t want to play varsity. He wanted to play with his friends on the freshman team.’
Anderson, though, played varsity, where he kept turning heads. During practice, teammates would gawk as he chucked footballs 70 yards down field. He threw for 3,100 yards and 45 touchdowns in four years as a starter. And — who knew? — he even started to like being the biggest kid.
‘He had a flair about him,’ former Plainville football coach Wayne Zalaski said.
During the spring, Anderson played centerfield so skillfully on Plainville’s baseball team that college and professional scouts came calling. Anderson even went to an open tryout for the Atlanta Braves.
In Plainville, a town of 17,000, everyone took notice. Some stared. Others whispered. He was only playing varsity because his dad was a coach, some parents grumbled.
Controversy swirled around Anderson. In 1996, Robin lost his coaching job after he complained to police about a senior who allegedly punched him in the face and screamed racial slurs at him during a locker room confrontation.
In 1997, during Anderson’s senior year, Robin accused Plainville athletics director Greg Ziogas of assault after Ziogas allegedly grabbed Anderson’s face mask following a game.
Anderson talks reluctantly about the subject, saying, ‘It’s just a situation that comes up in a small town where a lot of people don’t want to see you succeed.’
***
One day in Anderson’s junior year, the posters and pictures of McNabb started coming in the mail from Syracuse, which had pegged Anderson as one of its top prospects.
Anderson turned his room into a shrine to McNabb. To this day, McNabb pictures cover Anderson’s walls at home.
‘He kind of idolized him,’ Robin said.
Since Anderson didn’t have the SAT scores to qualify for SU, he spent a year at Milford Academy, a sports prep school in Connecticut.
‘They call it the meat factory,’ he said.
At Milford, Anderson was the third-string quarterback because coach Jeff Bevino had promised the job to two other players. While Anderson waited for his turn at quarterback, he played linebacker and tight end.
‘I saw a lot of other aspects of the game playing the other side of the ball,’ said Anderson, who played quarterback in Milford’s last two games.
So Anderson emerged from Milford a smarter player and came to Syracuse in 1999 with designs of impressing coaches with his ball-slinging style. Instead of handing him the starting job, as Anderson had hoped, SU coaches decided to redshirt him.
‘(In high school) I took more risks,’ he said. ‘I tried that here, and I saw that it didn’t work. So I figured out a method to keep me on the field.’
He’d focus on his strengths, use size to his advantage and protect the ball. In his redshirt freshman season, Anderson started four games. Last year, he leap-frogged incumbent starter Troy Nunes after two games by catering to SU’s run-first offense. Though Anderson completed just 50 percent of his passes, he set a Big East record with a 1.39 interception percentage.
‘I think the greatest thing he did last year was play within the scheme of the offense,’ offensive coordinator George DeLeone said.
‘Last year, he did not do one foolish thing with the ball,’ SU head coach Paul Pasqualoni said.
Anderson also opened up. No longer was he the small-town freshman with a mouth full of braces.
In an Oct. 6 game at Rutgers, when the Orangemen trailed in the first half to the lowly Scarlet Knights, players on the sideline started grumbling, ‘We’re gonna lose to Rutgers, I can’t believe this.’
Anderson was furious. ‘Get off your asses!’ he screamed. ‘We’re not gonna lose to Rutgers!’ With 1:18 left, Anderson hooked up with James Mungro for the game-winning touchdown.
At the end of last season, SU coaches said the final measuring stick of Anderson’s greatness would be his leadership. He’d have to learn how to chastise his friends on the team and keep a healthy distance from teammates, just like McNabb had.
‘I could see that with Don,’ Nunes said. ‘He had that — ‘I’m Don.’ But it was easier for him. He was the guy that was going to do everything.’
Just like Anderson used to dodge the stares, he always shied away from comparisons to McNabb. Sure, they wore the same number (five) and Anderson, as a freshman, did take McNabb’s locker space.
‘I think what he wants to do is make a name for himself,’ McNabb said.
These days, Anderson appears more comfortable in the spotlight. He’s used to the stares. He knows he’s not normal.
‘I want to be the best in Syracuse history, without a doubt,’ he said before again resorting to his team-first mantra. ‘But I also want to win. If I have to sacrifice yards or touchdown passes, I’ll do it.’
When Anderson takes his first snap tonight, he’ll stare down the field, comfortable with those stares back at him. He’ll have no craving to be small, no need to stay unnoticed. The biggest kid, on his biggest stage, will be ready to fire.
