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Roger Mooney

Roger Mooney covers the Tampa Bay Rays for The Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and News Channel 8. He has covered the Rays since their first season in 1998, including 11 years for the Bradenton Herald. Roger has also covered Florida, South Florida and Florida State football, the Bucs and the Lightning.

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Anderson stays with Rays in hybrid coaching-front office role

Posted Mar 25, 2008 by Marc Lancaster

Updated Mar 25, 2008 at 01:14 PM

DUNEDIN—As mentioned in the previous post, the Rays have a new coach today. Brian Anderson became perhaps the first player in baseball history to have his locker in the players’ clubhouse one day and the coaches’ the next day after he officially agreed yesterday to join the Rays in an off-field capacity for the entire season.

In a nod to his favorite TV show, The Office, Joe Maddon has dubbed Anderson the assistant to the pitching coach (as opposed to the assistant pitching coach). Anderson will fill a variety of roles, from helping out Jim Hickey to doing some advance scouting and working in the front office when the team is on the road during the season.

Anderson, you’ll recall, suffered a career-ending injury two weeks ago, blowing out his elbow for the third time. He said at the time he would stay with the Rays through the end of the spring, then return to his home near Cleveland and explore his options—perhaps returning to TV broadcasting, which he did last year, or going back to school.

Before he could get that far, Maddon approached him with this opportunity and Anderson jumped at it.

“It’s a nice opportunity for me to get a feel about an organization, from top to bottom, all different aspects of it,” he said. “I’ve had the playing side down for quite a while, and now I get to see how other things work, and just go from there. Maybe at some point there’s a niche that I kind of stumble on and they’re like, ‘That’s it, that’s what you’re going to do full-time.’ Until then, it’s just going to be a little bit of everything.”