A Different Kind of Alone

Marty Wilhelm on Rick Ankiel completing a solo journey from outcast pitcher to home run hitting outfielder

By Marty Wilhelm

The worst part was being alone.

Medical professionals had theories but provided no remedy. Finding someone else who shared the affliction was impossible. Those who were permanently broken by it wouldn’t talk to him, it was too embarrassing. Those who had conquered it wouldn’t talk either. Thoughts of relapse were just too frightening. Even his own teammates began to avoid him as if he were contagious.

This was a different type of alone.

***

I’ve always wondered if individual moments were important in the grand scheme of things. Generally I’ve subscribed to the belief that they aren’t. Everything happens because of trends and forces that build over time. The straw that breaks the camel’s back derives its thematic importance not from its existence but rather the existence of thousands of uncredited straws. Singular moments are rarely significant.

It’s fair to say no one truly realized the significance of October 3rd, 2000 in the moment. The Cardinals still won the game after all, beating Greg Maddux and the Atlanta Braves 7-5 in Game 1 of the NLDS. The meltdown of the Cardinals rookie starting pitcher was noteworthy but it was easily explained away. Everyone has bad days. Slept funny. Food poisoning. Something like that. Rick Ankiel himself laughed it off after the game.

“Hey, I guess at least I set a record,” referring to the most wild pitches thrown in a playoff game.

Ankiel’s next start was 9 days later. Game 2 of the NLCS against the Mets. He would throw 2 wild pitches. 3 more hit the back stop but didn’t count because there were no runners on base. That would have tied the record he had just set. He was pulled after recording just 2 outs, 1 hit and walking 3. His last appearance that season, also the Cardinals last game of the year, was in the 7th inning in Game 5. Another 2 outs, another 2 wild pitches. The Cardinals would go home and the Mets would go on to play the Yankees in the Subway Series.

Even then, the gravity of October 3rd was not obvious for Cardinals fans. It was a blip. He was a kid after all. It was the playoffs. Broke under the pressure. He’ll be fine with a few regular season innings. No one thought it was over. But people started talking about it in hushed voices. The “y” word. Baseball writers started dusting off Steve Blass.

Ankiel’s first start of 2001 proved those optimistic Cardinals fans correct. An April 8th win against Randy Johnson and the Diamondbacks included 8 strikeouts and, most importantly, 0 wild pitches. See, it was a blip. Everything is back on track.

But as April progressed, the balls turned to walks and it became apparent that there was something wrong with the young man. He didn’t have it. When he was demoted to Memphis in May, he had pitched 24 innings with 25 walks and an ERA of 7.13. Memphis did not fix him. Over three starts, he threw 4.1 innings with 17 walks and 12 wild pitches. It wasn’t a blip. The man was broken.

***

This is when October 3rd, 2000 really sunk in. It was a hugely important moment in time for all of the wrong reasons and Cardinals fans would spend years dissecting and lamenting the Greek tragedy of Rick Ankiel. Why didn’t LaRussa start Kile? If only Matheny had been there to save Rick from himself! Also what was he doing with that hunting knife anyways?

TINSTAAPP wasn’t as well known an acronym yet, but Cardinals fans need not have been Baseball Prospectus members to understand that an ulnar collateral ligament or rotator cuff could destroy a career. But even if the surgeries were successful, something felt different with Ankiel. This was worse. It doesn’t show up on an X-ray. You can’t scan it with magnetic resonance. James Andrews can’t snip it and replace it. It is an unseen evil. A curse from some vengeful deity.

The yips are beyond my comprehension. I can’t imagine having my livelihood taken in a moment. Imagine that being you. You wake up one day and you can’t use Excel, you can’t use Quickbooks. You can’t pay your mortgage. You can’t afford health insurance. Is this your fault? Did you deserve this? Punishment for some moral turpitude or sin of a past life? If you can’t overcome them, does that make you weak?

Also, you have to deal with it alone because help doesn’t exist. All alone. It’s hard for me to fathom something so awful. Probably why they gave it a cutesy name, to keep you from dwelling on how cruel it is.

***

As the years went by and the glass got rosier, Cardinals fans remembered Ankiel not as a talented young man from Florida but as a Sandy Koufax of whom they were unjustly robbed. Little attention was paid to Ankiel’s continued struggles with control in the minors. News in 2005 of him giving up pitching to focus on the outfield was met with a collective shrug. The final step of processing grief is acceptance. Ankiel existed in our brains not as a Cardinals prospect but as a tragic legend about how chaotic and unfair this world is. We needed it to be past tense, it was the only way to move on.

2,501 days. 2,501 days between the significant moments in our story. That’s how long it had been since that fateful game against the Braves. 2,501 days adrift. 2,501 days alone. Two thousand, five hundred and one.

It was August 9th, 2007. Scott Speizio had just checked into rehab and the Cardinals called up Rick Ankiel to play outfield. Yes, that Ankiel. The one with the yips.

Busch Stadium was buzzing with energy and excitement that no 52-59 team with Kip Wells and Mike Maroth in their rotation deserved. They knew that Ankiel’s return meant something, if not exactly what. It meant something about perseverance. It meant something about strength of character. It was Lazerus returning from the grave except if Lazerus had done it himself through sheer power of will. Something no one had witnessed before. The crowd responded with appropriate reverence.

Deafening cheers for Ankiel taking the field. A standing ovation for his first at bat. What a special moment.

In the bottom of the 7th, when Ankiel drilled a 2-1 curveball from Doug Brocail over the right field wall, the stadium erupted. It sounded as if the fabric of reality was torn apart. What were we seeing? At that moment Shohei Ohtani was 14 years old in Iwate and Babe Ruth was 59 years dead in New York. There were no 2 way players. This wasn’t the impossible we had already witnessed that evening, this was double impossible.

I was in the upper deck on the third base side. I was screaming and hugging my friend who had tears rolling down his face. 43,000 people in hysterics. Witnessing a moment larger and more significant than any single one of us. Larger than anyone but Rick Ankiel. I remember the crowd demanding a second curtain call.

Alone no longer.

Marty Wilhelm lives quietly in Boulder, Colorado with his partner and dog. He enjoys baseball, cooking and home food preservation. His favorite baseball memory is sitting next to Adrian Gonzalez during a screening of the Dark Knight at St. Louis Galleria.