Tim Anderson walks off the Tigers, does another bat flip and continues his star turn on the South Side

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Breathe easy, White Sox fans. Tim Anderson is back over .400.

Call him Timmy Ballgame, because after a four-hit night in a wild and crazy comeback win on the South Side, Anderson's batting .402 as his red-hot month of April marches on.

Anderson had the defining moment of the victory, a walk-off homer blasted into the left-field seats that finished off a 12-11 contest and cued the Gatorade showers at home plate. He added another bat flip to his stat sheet, too, on a day when the White Sox debuted T-shirts featuring Anderson's buzz-worthy bat flip against the Kansas City Royals earlier this month with the accompanying tagline: "Stick Talk."

Well, Anderson's stick did the talking Friday. And because of it, it got spiked into the ground in front of the White Sox dugout in another celebratory show of exuberance.

"I was thinking about it this time. I knew I had to do it," Anderson said after the game. "It's different. I did it again so I let the people know it wasn't a fluke. It was definitely a great moment."

Nothing about this first month of baseball has been a fluke for Anderson, who has gone from a guy with serious questions about his game to a star in the making on the South Side. He's caught the national spotlight, first as an embodiment of the league's "let the kids play" marketing slogan and then as a controversial subject who used a racially charged word that earned him a one-game suspension.

But questions about Anderson's on-base skills, whether he could hit enough to entrench himself as the White Sox shortstop of the future are being answered by the fruits of Anderson's hard work and his goal to have fun playing the game. Will he wind up the biggest star on a team poised to include Eloy Jimenez, Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, Dylan Cease, Luis Robert and Nick Madrigal? Time will tell. But he's applied the definition of "star player" to himself in the early going here in 2019. He's the guy White Sox fans want at the plate in the game's most crucial situations. And he delivered.

"I want those moments," he said. "Those are the moments we prepare for. For me to get that moment, it's an exciting moment for me. I always want to be in that moment."

Anderson's batting over .400, with an on-base percentage nearing .450 and an OPS north of 1.000. He's got five homers before the end of April, putting him on pace to hit around 30 after he hit 20 a season ago. He's got 10 steals, which would put him on pace for about 60 after he swiped 26 bags in 2018. In all likelihood, those numbers will come back toward Earth as the summer drags on. But there's nothing saying that Anderson can't have a transformational season, and he's well on his way with the way he's playing right now.

But outside of the numbers, he's doing it, too. He's energizing this team at every turn and, as he so often puts it, trying to have fun out there. It shows. Perhaps nobody inside the White Sox clubhouse has used the phrase "Ricky's boys don't quit" more than Anderson. And while it's one thing to have that mindset and try to claw back from every deficit, to actually do it like the White Sox did Friday, coming back from down 8-1 to win 12-11, that's another thing.

"You've seen it tonight," Anderson said. "We fought back. We fought and were able to get the win. Heck of a game, heck of a night for the guys. We're going to enjoy it and do it again tomorrow."

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