Anderson's daughter-designed cleats support worthy cause

This story was excerpted from Scott Merkin’s White Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

HOUSTON – There will be a slight surprise for Justin Anderson upon donning his White Sox cleats Friday night at Minute Maid Park for the series opener with Houston and the start of Major League Baseball’s Players' Weekend.

The right-handed reliever, who has 37 strikeouts over 36 2/3 innings this season, knows the cleats designer will be his daughter, Quinn, to help bring awareness for the Mast Cell Disease Society, an organization dedicated to the disorder plaguing the 2 1/2-year-old artist. But a smiling Anderson wasn’t quite sure of the design.

“My wife joked that will be a quick project,” Anderson told MLB.com earlier this week. “Whatever she wants to color up on the cleats, that’s what I will end up on my feet that night. So, I’m excited.”

On Saturday night, Anderson will feature new Mast Cell Disease Society cleats with designs coming from other kids after the Society’s website delivered a call for those renderings. Justin and Briana, Anderson’s wife, chose the Players' Weekend winners.

Quinn wasn’t diagnosed until June of 2023, so the Andersons had to go through a full year of watching their daughter “getting pricked and probed for blood work,” according to the reliever, meeting with various doctors and allergists along the way. It’s an issue featuring a huge umbrella of different triggers, as Anderson explained, including pollen, chlorine, heat and especially foods.

Only eight safe foods currently exist for their daughter, and the Andersons are receiving ongoing education about this autoimmune condition.

“They are very normal foods,” Anderson said. “I joked with the guys in the clubhouse, my daughter will eat two steaks a day sometimes. It’s hilarious. She’ll eat it for breakfast and for dinner. And that’s one of her safe foods.

“Sometimes it’s the proteins in the steak that can make her upset, but other times she handles it very well. Another one she loves is sweet potatoes. Two really amazing foods for you already. We are very fortunate she can eat those every day.

“My wife has been an absolute super woman with all this learning of how we can live in a hotel and get her the food and cook her the food she needs. She can thrive,” Anderson said. “There’s certain things we are hoping she can grow out of at the same time.”

Sometimes a fever follows when this condition is triggered for Quinn. And the Andersons are undergoing home renovations to make things more livable and foster an air-purified environment for their daughter.

Anderson also feels fortunate his daughter isn’t as highly sensitive as others dealing with the condition are, and as a child, Quinn is very resilient. That resiliency inspires her father.

“It’s mind-blowing,” Anderson said. “Especially watching my daughter go through a lot of these things, it brings me a lot more strength to get me through certain things in life, certain things I don’t want to do.

“There’s always a time where I feel like I’m struggling, but I know if she can get pricked and probed, you can do this for 10 seconds or five minutes, you know what I mean? That perspective has really helped me out a lot.”