When the baseball starts back up tomorrow, there are going to be all kinds of storylines to follow.
Can Albert Pujols win the first Triple Crown since 1967?
Will the trading of Roy Halladay change the landscape of the National League pennant race?
Will the National League Wild Card really come from the NL West?
These are all great stories, and I can’t wait to see how they play out (especially if Halladay ends up on the Cardinals).
But there’s another story that’s weighing on my mind. It’s not about records, pennants or the drama of October.
It’s about Rick Ankiel.
Most people know the basic outlines of the Ankiel story, but the basic outlines won’t do. To truly appreciate the tragedy of Rick Ankiel, you need the details.
A second-round pick by the Cardinals out of Port St. Lucie High School in Florida, Ankiel was as can’t miss as can’t miss got.
Combining a rocket fastball, heavy sinker and devastating hook, Ankiel was the high school player of the year drafted in the second round and signed for $2.5 million, fifth highest ever at the time.
He was a full-time big league starter at age 20.
He was second in the Rookie of the Year voting.
And he had earned so much faith as a rookie that Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sent him at 21-years-old to the mound to face the great Greg Maddux and the Atlanta Braves in Game One of the 2000 National League Division Series.
But the third inning of that game was what can only be categorized as a legendary meltdown.
Competing on the grandest stage short of the World Series itself, Ankiel imploded, throwing five wild pitches, walking four and allowing four earned runs.
With another terrible start against the Mets in Game Two of the NLCS and an equally bad relief appearance in Game Five of that series, Ankiel finished the 2000 playoffs with nine wild pitches, 11 walks and seven earned runs allowed in just four innings.
Ankiel was permanently damaged goods. The Cards tried to hide him by throwing bullpens off on hidden fields and limiting media access, but there was no use. Ankiel’s mind was broken, and not even legendary sports doctor James Andrews could fix that.
After fits and starts and losing the better part of two seasons to injury, including Tommy John Surgery in 2003, Ankiel finally called it quits on his pitching career in 2005.
And normally that would be the end. And if it were, it would be a sad story, but not a terribly interesting one. Young phenoms flame out all the time. It’s a sad fact of the game. Just ask Mark Prior.
But here is where we get into the Hollywood part of the story.
Ankiel didn’t just quit and walk away like so many burnouts before him. Instead, he actually became a legitimate outfield prospect.
By August of 2007, Ankiel was leading the Pacific Coast League in homers with 32 in just 102 games. And once Cardinals outfielder Scott Spiezio was forced away from the game with a drug addiction, it was time for Ankiel’s triumphant return to the Major Leagues.
You couldn’t have scripted it any better: A packed Busch Stadium crowd gave Ankiel a standing ovation prior to his first at-bat. And after he hit a three-run jack in the seventh, the place exploded like it was McGwire’s 62nd.
This was love.
Newspaper columnists gushed, sports talk radio buzzed and TV newscasts spliced together images of Ankiel’s homers and scenes of Robert Redford playing Roy Hobbs in one of the greatest sports hero movies of all time.
The Flameout was now The Natural.
And if this was Hollywood, that’s where the story would have ended. That’s where he rides off into the sunset, a hero reborn with a pretty blonde on his arm.
Cue the music and roll the credits. There’s not a dry eye in the house.
But that’s not where it ended. <!-- my page break -->
Really, those few weeks after his August 2007 call-up was as good as it got.
2008 in total wasn’t a bad year for Ankiel by any means: 120 games, 453 at-bats, .264 average, 25 homers, 71 RBI, .506 slugging percentage. There were also some incredible defensive plays along the way.
Not bad for a washed up pitcher. Not bad at all.
But battling a sports hernia, Ankiel finished 2008 in a tailspin, hitting just .169 with three homers, 12 RBI and 20 strikeouts in his final 27 games (only 16 of those starts).
And his batting woes have only intensified this season.
Ask La Russa his opinion, and he’ll tell you it’s probably because of the shoulder damage Ankiel suffered when he crashed into the wall May 4 in a collision so violent it left the bill of his hat bent at a 90-degree angle.
But the truth is Ankiel was only hitting .247 with a .326 on-base percentage when he crashed into that wall.
This wasn’t a case of a guy going good, then losing it due to injury. This was a case of a guy going bad, then going worse.
On the season, Ankiel is only hitting .215 with a .278 on-base percentage, five homers and 22 RBI in 223 AB. He has struck out 54 times, 22 of those coming with men in scoring position, a situation when he’s hitting just .203.
And walking with my buddy Z at the All-Star Fanfest here in St. Louis on Saturday, talking about who we would give up for Halladay and how we couldn’t give up Colby Rasmus because of Ankiel’s struggles, I had a terrible thought:
The same thing that happened on the mound in 2000 is happening in the batter’s box in 2009.
It’s a bit harder to notice because strikeouts aren’t nearly the same dramatic failure as wild pitches, but Ankiel looks just as lost now in the box as he did on the mound those fateful nights back in 2000.
Cardinals fans, known for their patience and loyalty and willingness to forgive, are starting to run low on those qualities. It’s not quite to Jason Isringhausen status yet, but there’s a distinct sense of discomfort in the crowd whenever number 24 steps up to bat.
Even La Russa, ever loyal to his veterans (and he loves Ankiel like a son), has been forced to reduce Ankiel’s role in order to stay atop a highly competitive NL Central. Rasmus has taken over center field and Ankiel has been relegated to platoon status with Chris Duncan (another object of scorn) in left field.
This isn’t how Ankiel’s story was supposed to end, not after that triumphant return in August of 2007. Not after all those comparison to Hobbs and The Natural. And not after St. Louis Cardinals fans invested nine years of their lives living and dying with the extreme ups and downs of his amazing story.
And maybe this won’t be how it ends. Maybe he comes back from the break refreshed, healthy and blasting bombs.
He’s come back from hell once.
Maybe he can do it again.
I hope so. A story like this deserves a better ending.
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