In Buzz Bissinger’s best-selling book, “Three Nights in August,” former St. Louis Cardinals’ manager Tony LaRussa shared how he regretted his decision to start 21-year-old Rick Ankiel as the pitcher for Game One of the 2000 National League Division Series. LaRussa called it “a decision that perhaps haunts him more than any he has ever made.”
Given the long managerial career of LaRussa, that remorse carries weight.
Wait. We Cardinals’ fans had waited through nearly all of the 1990s for consistently good baseball to return to St. Louis. Sure, we had the excitement of the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase in 1998. But nothing beats postseason wins—like the Cardinals teams of my youth in the 1980s (or my dad’s youth in the 1960s … or his dad’s in the 1930s and 1940s). With the exception of the famed Gashouse Gang of the 1930s, Cardinals baseball had seemed to go stale in odd-numbered decades.
But the year 2000 moved us back to an even-numbered decade—time to win! The Cardinals were in the postseason with a first round series of five games. Rick Ankiel had gone 11-7 as a rookie that season, coming in second in the Rookie of the Year voting. And now he would face Atlanta Braves’ ace Greg Maddux in the biggest game of his young career.
Ankiel had already received accolades like “the next Warren Spahn” — so his first taste of playoff action coincided with the expectation from Cardinals’ fans that their team would be on the rise once more. The Cardinals did have a fantastic decade—led by a young man named Albert Pujols who would rookie the next season.
But Ankiel’s career took a sudden trajectory in the third inning of that game. He gave up four runs that inning and did it with history-making wildness. He walked four batters and threw five wild pitches. Nobody had thrown five wild pitches in an inning since 1890.
At the time, I had two sons, and I tried to explain what had just happened. Being two and one, they didn’t comprehend.
The yips. People define the yips as the sudden loss of fine motor skills in an athlete. Throwing a baseball 90 MPH for a strike requires a lot of skill. Ankiel had it, then lost it—and ended up losing his pitching career—though not without attempting a comeback for several years.
He then transitioned to being an outfielder…and everyone laughed: “Hey Ankiel, don’t you know you can’t become a Major League hitter at the age of 25?”
Fast forward seven years to the summer of 2007. I loaded up my sons, now four of them, and headed to Busch Stadium to see the Cardinals play. And there in the outfield was Rick Ankiel, having worked his way through the Minors and back up to the Major Leagues that season. Ankiel threw a speedy Pirate out at second with a bullet of a throw—and right on the money. He also knocked in a few runs in a blowout of a game.
I tried to explain to my sons who this Ankiel guy was and how what he was doing was historic. Because of the yips, Ankiel won’t be inducted into the Hall of Fame. But on that day in Busch Stadium, I was able to talk to my sons about grit and determination.
By the end of his career, Ankiel became the first player since Babe Ruth to hit fifty homers and also win at least ten games. But honestly, just making it back up to the Majors seven years after that first disastrous game on the mound—that is incredible.
As columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote: “His return after seven years—if only three days long—is the stuff of legend.”
Ankiel now serves the Washington Nationals as a life skills coach. He offers a set of empathetic ears and a word of counsel to players who are struggling with the challenges of professional baseball—the type of struggles that go beyond balls and strikes.
Ankiel’s book releases this month—The Phenomenon: Pressure, the Yips, and the Pitch that Changed My Life. This book is a moving read as Ankiel bares his soul and provides the reader with an intimate look at the psychological unraveling he experienced.
To throw in a baseball cliché, Ankiel left it all on the field with this book. Don’t miss it.
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