Bob Anderson has played APBA since the early 1960’s.  He met Warren Wool and Jeff David during the MLB strike of 1981 after they ran an ad looking for APBA players in his newspaper.  He was a charter member of the resultant River City APBA League.  He later served as commissioner of the Baton Rouge APBA Association (BRAA), a play-by-mail card league, for about 10 years. 

Bob is the Florida Parishes Bureau Chief for the Baton Rouge Advocate, where he has won more than 40 national, regional and state awards for investigative reporting, environmental writing and feature writing. 

Bob is married to Laurie Smith Anderson, who also writes for the newspaper. He is the father of two sons and a daughter. Like Bob, his sons have played APBA from an early age. His oldest son, Dobin, teaches high school in Florida. His daughter Sarah was graduated from the University of Florida in journalism and political science and began her career with the Associated Press (Columbus, Ohio) in the Fall of 2005. Casey, his youngest son, is currently studying at the University of Florida.

Bob coached Casey’s baseball team for 10 years, twice helping them to undefeated regular seasons (one tie in a 21-0-1 American Legion season) and two World Series appearances. The record of the first team he coached would have only served to get a good draft pick.

Bob graduated from LSU in 1971 and served two years in the Army before returning to The Advocate where he had begun working in college as a part-time sports writer and later a full-time copy editor. After returning to the paper, he worked as police reporter, feature writer and environmental editor before taking the bureau chief’s job with an office less than 10 minutes from his home.

When possible, Bob takes in a week of spring training in Florida. He became a Pirate fan when the Bucs beat the Yankees in 1960 and remains loyal despite the team’s hard times.  

In the late Spring of 2005, Bob and Casey embarked on a once-in-a-lifetime father-son adventure --- a 45 day trek by train and foot across America.  Read about their adventures at http://www.westernhostels.org/gowestnewsletter/hiusa_05november.html

The photo of Bob, Laurie and James Earl Jones was taken in November 2004.  See if you can pick out Bob!

November 2005