Perhaps it's fitting that Brady Anderson goes on the Hall of Fame ballot one year after one of his closest friends Cal Ripken Jr. achieved baseball's greatest honor. Anderson, a three-time All-Star, played with Ripken for more than a decade and made his biggest headlines by swatting a career-high 50 home runs in 1996. That's not really the type of player he was for the rest of his career, though. Anderson made his reputation as a fleet-flooted outfielder with a well-rounded offensive game. He stole more than 20 bases seven times but hit more than 20 home runs just three times in 15 seasons. Still, Anderson is about as recognizable as any non-Ripken Oriole from his era. Anderson was drafted and developed by the Red Sox, but he was traded to the Orioles after just 41 big league games. He never hit higher than .231 for his first three-plus seasons in Baltimore but finally began to assert himself in 1998. Anderson batted .271 with 21 homers and 53 stolen bases that year, earning the first of his All-Star assignments. "It happens to everybody. You age and you stop playing -- although he seems to have the fountain of youth, somehow," Ripken said recently of Anderson. "He came over in the Mike Boddicker trade and Boddicker's locker was next to mine, so he ended up coming into that locker. We struck up a friendship from that point." "I don't know how many votes he's going to get, [but] I'll vote for him."