A World Series Ring Belongs to Shenendehowa’s Own Ian Anderson

Any baseball expert in the world would qualify 5 scoreless, and hitless, World Series innings as a major contribution to a team's championship. However, the Capital Region doesn't need any experts to tell them how special Ian Anderson is and neither do the Braves. Now, the player who grew up in Rexford and pitched for the Shenendehowa High School Plainsmen gets to flash some pretty incredible bling around town.

Tuesday night, the Atlanta Braves defeated the Houston Astros in Game 6 of the World Series by a score of 7-0. Ian Anderson was scheduled to start Game 7. That is quite a responsibility on the shoulders of a 23 year old with 2 years of Major League Baseball experience under his belt. If Ian's Game 3 start was any indication of things to come in Game 7, the Astros were in trouble.

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The reason is that Anderson has shown an incredible ability to pitch well in stressful situations, the playoffs. Of Ian's 38 MLB starts, 8 of them are in the postseason. His 4-0 record in those 8 games come with a skimpy 1.26 ERA. Long and short, Ian Anderson would be the Game 7 World Series starter on most rosters with those numbers.

It is fun to watch athletes or anyone for that matter come from your local area and succeed on the world's biggest stage. It is almost incredible that two local athletes like Ian Anderson and Kevin Huerter of the Atlanta Hawks grew up together, played on the same high school and travel teams and now they are succeeding in their respective major league sports in the same city, Atlanta. Wow!

Congratulations to Ian Anderson, his family and friends. As Atlanta celebrated, so did hundreds, maybe thousands of others in the Capital Region for their World Series hero. It truly doesn't get any better. I do have a feeling that a certain Atlanta Hawk is determined to bring home a championship ring of his own to the Clifton Park area to show his old teammate.