As an up-and-coming pitcher in the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm system, Rick Ankiel led all minor-league hurlers in 1998 with 222 strikeouts. The next year, with the big-league club, he fanned 194 batters. But his mastery didn’t last. The following season, pitching in the playoffs, he threw five wild pitches – in a single inning! Ankiel’s battle with this mysterious mental block and his decision to remake his baseball career as an outfielder is told in “The Phenomenon,” an out-of-the-ordinary story of baseball courage and determination. Ankiel transitioned during seasons back in the minors to playing centerfield and eventually finished his 13 years in the majors as the first player since Babe Ruth to win at least 10 games as a pitcher and hit 50 home runs. He pretty much became a journeyman player during his second baseball life, playing for six teams in a five-year span.
Here’s an excerpt from The Phenomenon:
“I cared what people thought of me. Ballplayers didn’t walk away. They were shoved, forcibly removed from the premises at the end of a cattle prod, railing against the injustices of age and declining skills and the idiots who decided who was too old and unskilled. Real men stuck it out. Real ballplayers with nothing else to do were particularly obstinate. I could have kept pitching, stuck with the daily physical and psychological program that nudged me back toward the mound. In my heart, I believed I could pitch in the big leagues. I’d earned it. It was just so hard. It was just so burdensome. It was just time to stop, for those reasons. I was exhausted. So I was struck by the ease of the morning, the peacefulness that rode along with me and followed me toward my resignation and, out there somewhere, the rest of my life.”
