Remember Highlights magazine and the "Double Check" game with two drawings with subtle differences that asked you to find the differences? Well, let's play a little baseball version of Double Check with Orioles left-hander Brian Matusz:
The biggest difference, of course, is the color of his glove. But look a little more closely and see the differences in the gloves.
Yep, the tan one has the name of former Oriole Brady Anderson.
Roch Kubatko of MASNSports.com asked Matusz about the gloves. The pitcher said it was given to him by Anderson.
"He was like, 'if you want to pitch like a big leaguer, you need to use a big-league glove,'" Matusz told Kubatko. "He said he's never given a glove to anyone before. When we went to Anaheim, he went home and found it and asked if I wanted to pitch with it, and I said, 'Yeah.'"
Matusz's first game with the glove, April 20 at Anaheim, was a lot like his first two this season -- he allowed four earned runs (six total) on nine hits in five innings. In his second outing with the glove, Thursday at home against the Blue Jays, he didn't allow an earned run (two runs total) on four hits in six innings. He didn't get the win, but his team did and he saw his ERA drop from 7.98 to 5.66. It was his first quality start since the 2010 season.
So is he going to continue wearing the Brady Anderson glove?
"Absolutely," Matusz told Kubatko. "No doubt about it."
