Anthony Getting It Together : Baseball: Astro outfielder, a San Diego native, is on a tear.

Relaxing in front of his Astrodome locker, as prepared as one can expect to be before departing on one of the longest road trips in Major League Baseball history, Eric Anthony spent a few moments reflecting on his personal journeys through baseball and life.

Neither has been as easy as one might imagine for Anthony, a San Diego native and Houston’s cleanup hitter and right fielder. Then again, growing up in front of the skeptical eye of the nation’s fourth-largest city seldom is.

“It makes you better when you struggle a little,” Anthony said. “I feel I’m a better player and a better person because of those earlier years.”

Anthony is 24. At one time, he was labeled an “untouchable”, albeit raw, prospect by the Astros, who drafted him in the 34th round in 1986 even though he never played high school baseball.

Reggie Waller, then a scout with the Astros and now the Padres’ director of scouting, made the recommendation to draft and sign Anthony based on a few summer-league games he had seen Anthony play. A little more than three years later, on national television, Anthony hit his first major league home run, off San Francisco’s Rick Reuschel.

Anthony’s minor-league statistics were spectacular--twice he led the minor leagues in home runs and his batting average steadily increased up to and over .300. But aside from an occasional burst of power, he struggled against major league pitchers.

“He hit a tremendous home run when he first came here,” Houston Manager Art Howe recalled. “But for some reason, he always tried to hit one further every other time up.”

After three stints with the Astros and three subsequent demotions to the minors, he entered this season with a .179 lifetime major-league average and no guarantee of getting opportunities to improve it.

“He was on the bubble in spring training,” Howe said. “He was in no way a lock to make the team, but we had to make a decision because he would have been a free agent. He was either going to make our club, or we were going to deal him. It ended up working out well for us and him.”

Indeed. Before Wednesday night’s game against the Dodgers, Anthony was hitting a career-high .250 with 12 home runs and 52 runs batted in, despite going two for 12 in April, not collecting his first RBI until May 4 and playing with bone chips in his left elbow.

“There’s a lot of luck involved in this game, and I hadn’t had any up until this year,” Anthony declared 11 days ago, a few hours before launching a career-high two home runs and matching a career high with three hits in an 8-5 loss to the Chicago Cubs.

It was Sunday, July 26. The first 15,000 of an eventual crowd of 26,813 at the Dome would receive a “Road Trip” poster detailing the Astros’ upcoming 28-day, 9,138-mile excursion through most of the National League.

Anthony, who returns to San Diego today as the Astros and Padres begin a four-game series at Jack Murphy Stadium, appeared not the least bit concerned about Houston’s historic schedule.

“There’s no reason we should go into this thing negatively,” he said.

And the next night in Atlanta, he hit a grand slam. It was the first of his career and it gave him seven home runs in July, the most by an Astro in any month since Glenn Davis hit nine in June, 1990.

“There have been times, I’d say most of May, June and July, where he’s absolutely carried us,” Howe said.

Playing winter ball and learning to hit the curveball this past off-season in Venezuela was the key, agreed Anthony, Howe and Houston pitching coach Bob Cluck, another San Diego native and former San Diego State pitcher.

“Going to Venezuela was the greatest thing for him,” said Cluck, who visited Anthony while on a 10-day scouting trip to Venezuela. “He could have hung around (Houston) and did card shows, but he showed he wanted to improve himself.

“He struggled there for a good month, struggled badly, but he stuck it out.

“Seeing all those Latin American pitchers and all those off-speed pitches has made him a better hitter. He’s learned to hit the other way a little. He’s learned to cut his swing down a little. He’s learned he doesn’t have to hit the ball 550 feet to hit a home run.”

“He’s shown a lot of character this year coming back,” said Astro shortstop Casey Candaele, whose locker is near Anthony’s. “He seemed like he always had an inner confidence that he could do the job here. It just takes some guys a little longer to get it going.

“He’s a great guy to be around. He takes each day the same. You wouldn’t know if he just went three for four or (0 for four). That’s a good disposition to have.”

Anthony is purposefully low key these days, a state of being teammates and coaches have recommended to him for handling pressure.

“He tends to get real emotional about this game,” left fielder Pete Incaviglia said. “I’ve talked to him about trying to calm down, about letting his bat do the talking. He’s the kind of guy who can win a game with one swing, but he needs to be relaxed. I think he is more relaxed this year.”

Said Cluck: “I think he realizes now nothing’s permanent. So he doesn’t get too high about any of his successes. He’s learned to accept it and stay on an even keel.

“What some people don’t realize is he hadn’t played a whole lot of baseball before coming here. He’d never learned to handle the ups and downs that are a natural part of the game. Learning those things in triple-A and the big leagues is hard to do.”

At Mt. Carmel High, Anthony never played varsity baseball. He was ineligible as a sophomore and his mother wouldn’t allow him to play as a junior because of grades.

Instead of returning for his senior year, he dropped out of school and moved to Oakland to live with his brother, William. Four months later, he moved to Houston to live with another brother, Mike. In Houston, he attended classes at Sharpstown High and passed a test to earn a high school equivalency diploma, but he didn’t play baseball again until signing with the Astros.

In his first year of pro ball, at Sarasota, Fla., in 1986, he appeared in only 13 games and batted only 17 times. His job then was not to hit, but to learn the game, make up for lost time and get in shape.

In three successive seasons--at Sarasota, Asheville, N.C., and Columbus, Ga.--he led his league in home runs and increased his batting average from .250 to .264, .273 and .300.

“There aren’t many people who have come up like he has,” Howe said. “He’s got great tools. But to be truthful, he’s still learning to play the game.”

That much was evident during his first three stints in Houston. He batted .180 in 1989, .192 in ’90 and .153 in ‘91, and finished each of those seasons in the minors.

“One thing we’ve shown in this organization is when we send you down you are not necessarily buried,” Howe said. “I think we proved that with him. And he proved to us he could play here.”

Said Cluck: “We had all that time invested in him. We wouldn’t give up. We weren’t ready to quit. And neither was he.”