Just L.A.: These Phillies remind Larry Andersen of 1993

ATLANTA — Larry Andersen started walking off the mound all those years ago before the umpire even called a strike. It was the biggest moment of his career — “Unforgettable,” he said of his punch out to finish Game 5 of the 1993 National League Championship Series for the Phillies — and Andersen didn’t need to be told the game was over.

The 4-3 win was one of the most exciting in franchise history as a 10th-inning rally past Atlanta pushed the Phillies within a game of their first pennant in a decade. But Andersen, who was 40 years old and pitching in his 16th big-league season, simply left the mound and pumped his fist a few times before meeting catcher Darren Daulton.

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“I think more than anything, I was just soaking in what I was able to accomplish and what it did for the team,” Andersen said on Monday while the current Phillies took batting practice ahead of Tuesday’s National League Division Series opener against Atlanta, which fell 29 years to the day of Andersen’s moment. “There’s nothing like it. The emotions were running through me.”

Nearly three decades later, Andersen is back with the Phils in Atlanta for October baseball. After shifting his schedule this season to work mostly weekend home games as the team’s radio color commentator, Andersen is on the road for the postseason alongside his longtime partner Scott Franzke.

The two friends — “To be here with Scott, people joke around and say ‘Living the dream,’ but that’s it,” Andersen said — had worked sparingly together during the last month of the season. But it was hard to tell that during the team’s wild-card sweep of the Cardinals.

It had been 11 years since they called a postseason game and Philly’s beloved radio pairing didn’t miss a beat.

“He knows me, I know him,” Franzke said. “I know how it’s going to play out. I think the biggest thing is just how invested he gets and being able to see that firsthand and sit next to him and feel the tension from him, it’s such a different Larry Andersen. He’s usually a happy-go-lucky, life-of-the-party kind of guy. He’s like the guy who is going to throw the brick at the TV.

“It’s fun to watch him be nervous. It’s fun to watch him be anxious, to be tense, and worry about the outcome. People get the sense on the air that he’s a fan and they should because he wants this as badly as any fan in Philadelphia.”

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For Andersen, “L.A.” is the nickname that nearly everyone knows him by, and once that nickname was an idea for an apparel line. But “Just L.A.” never quite took off after he created it with a friend in the 1980s.

And then he mentioned it this summer to Caz Ferrante, who owns a local embroidery company. Soon Andersen had a stack of hats and shirts with his “Just L.A.” logo stitched onto them. Maybe, Andersen thought, there was something he could do with his old brand.

“I thought about Krukky [John Kruk] selling his hats that he designed at the ballpark and going towards Phillies Charities,” Andersen said. “So I thought of where I could go with my profits and who I could give it to.”

Andersen thought about the men he often visits for dinner at Hope House on 9th and Cantrell Streets and how much Transformation to Recovery — the nonprofit that manages the South Philly recovery center — could benefit from the money he could raise.

So he had Ferrante design more items to sell at JustLAApparel.com. Andersen wore a blue “Just LA” hat as he watched the Phils on Monday. All the profits go to the Hope House, a 10-bed recovery house that is affiliated with the South Philly church that Andersen attends.

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“There’s no words,” Andersen said of what the Hope House means to him. “When you hear the stories about what they’ve been through. A lot of people will say, ‘Hey, they had a choice. They didn’t have to do that.’ But we all have choices and sometimes we make bad choices. Should these people be penalized their whole lives? If this can help these guys get out of where they are and stay on the right track, it does a world for me. It’s a great feeling to think what doing this could do for them. That’s what it’s all about. How can we help them?”

The Phillies needed Andersen for the final three outs of Game 5 because Mitch Williams allowed three runs in the ninth to tie the game. Andersen pitched in 64 games that season and had a 2.92 ERA as one of the team’s most reliable relievers. But this was his first save.

The Phillies took the lead in the top of the 10th on a home run by Lenny Dykstra, who silenced Fulton County Stadium and shouted “Didn’t I?” as he slapped hands with third-base coach Larry Bowa. Andersen retired the three batters he faced in the bottom of the inning and sent the Phillies back home with the pennant in reach.

“That meant everything,” Andersen said of that save. “To me, the biggest word of the ‘93 team is ‘team.’ Rob Thomson talks here so much about how unselfish these guys are. That was us. Our team was so unselfish. It was all about winning. Everyone. I actually want to talk to Rhys [Hoskins] and tell him how he reminds me of Dave Hollins. Hollins was the epitome of a team player that year. He could go 5-for-5 and drive in six runs, but if we lost, he was miserable. I’m serious. It wasn’t acting. If he went 0-for-4 with four punch outs and we won, he’s high-fiving everyone. Oh, there’s Rhys ...”

Andersen left his spot near the dugout and stopped Hoskins as he finished batting practice, telling him how he reminded him of his old teammate. It’s been nearly three decades since that team stunned Atlanta. And now Andersen is back to see if the Phils can do it again.

“I wanted to tell him how much I appreciate him,” Andersen said. “I think he was 0-for-9 in that series, but you could still see what that win meant to him. I wanted to tell him how much I respected and appreciated that. The ‘93 team was a team.”

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