The Phenomenon

by Rick Ankiel

  I was mad, plenty.

  But it was good to know someone got me. It was reassuring to know that that someone didn’t feel sorry for me and wasn’t thinking, What the fuck?… That was enough.

  So on those mornings when it was just me and Dave Duncan and whatever catcher was lassoed into duty (and, often enough, dozens of reporters), I’d pat my hand with the rosin bag and see what today would bring. Sometimes it was OK. Other times not. And then I’d go home to the wall.

  The story had been a curiosity, but somewhat contained, in the fall. There had been baseball games to play, which meant access limitations for reporters, and the larger story was the Cardinals winning a playoff game, or losing one, or winning a series, or, finally, being eliminated.

  The headlines had been along the lines of “Cardinals Survive Ankiel’s Wildness.” The look-away version, “Maddux Sputters in Braves Loss.” The more pointed, “Cardinals’ Ankiel Wildest Pitcher in 110 Years.” The homey, “Wild Outings Make Cards’ Ankiel Laugh.” The reassuring, “Cardinals Still Back Wild Lefty.”

  Spring training was far more casual. For the most part, reporters could go where they wanted when they wanted. They could be in the clubhouse for hours. They could stand on a back field at dawn. They could wait all day by the parking lot, knowing I’d have to come by eventually to get my car. So I was pretending to be fine, and my teammates were pretending I was fine, and we both knew better, and so did the reporters, but I was not going to relive every throw from every day. When I recovered—and I was sure I would, still—it would be with a clear head. Selective amnesia. If the fastball were misbehaving that day, then I’d throw the hell out of the curveball, thus far reasonably functional. The goal was to stay in the moment, to wake up on Opening Day with some confidence and a place in the starting rotation, and to leave it that small. It was challenging to be asked to describe all the pitches that had zipped past the catcher three hours before, or hadn’t. It was trying to be asked to sum up the state of my head, my heart, my nerve, every day. Normal wasn’t normal when it came with dozens of news cameras and wandering baseball writers and sound engineers and producers who, let’s be honest, had a better story if only I’d whip one over the backstop.

  Some days I would be normal, or get close to it. Some days I had no idea where the ball was going, the newer normal. Others, the ball was fairly obedient. That was the roller coaster, not just on the field but on the drive home and on my couch and over dinner and in my dreams. Those are the stories that draw far-reaching interest, particularly in spring training, when a column about the twenty-one-year-old phenom who’d lost his way would get a writer to dinner with plenty of time to spare. That, in the newspaper business, was known as a gimme. “Go check on the head case Ankiel. That’s an easy one.”

  Spring became uneasy for everyone.

  “Stop,” I pleaded to the jostling cameramen. “I can’t work on anything. Just stop.”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” a teammate snapped. “We’re just playing catch.”

  Then that, of course, became the story, how edgy Cardinals camp had become, because the Ankiel kid was still wild, still had those demons. It made everybody more grumpy than they had to be, and then I started thinking about that too.

  Tony La Russa fumed.

  “The media should not be part of this,” he’d say. “It’s prolonged and beat up and feasted on. I see guys drooling talking about this because it’s good copy or some goddamned thing. Enough is enough.

  “Nobody gives a damn about Rick Ankiel, his father, this embarrassment. We’re not going to help anyone have fun with him, with this.”

  Tony and Dave Duncan cooked up ways to duck the media. It was why I threw at odd hours, or off schedule, or in places off limits to anyone but players and coaches.

  “A zoo,” Dave would grumble.

  Tony also worried over the strain on my arm, particularly my elbow. Just the season before, he’d seen a pitcher whose mechanics were not classic but were natural. My arm action was smooth. My effort was easy. I hadn’t had to strain to throw hard. In the throes of the yips, I changed. My delivery became more violent. My arm angle changed. First up a few degrees, then down a few, then up again as I searched for a reliable release point. It depended on the day, really, and then on what happened the last pitch, and also the number of bail-out curveballs that were necessary. He was worried and had no idea how often I was throwing in the backyard, how much tension there was in front of the wall.

  Tony didn’t say much. He left the pitchers to the man we all called Dunc. He watched and leaned into any progress that came. He suspected the worst, however, and hated it.

  “I’ll just say this,” Tony said years later. “My respect, esteem, affection for him go to that spring, because this guy fought it and fought it and fought it. He never blamed the pitching coach, the manager. He didn’t blame the mound. Didn’t blame the catcher. He stood up so strong, taking it all in, internalizing it, this son of a gun. It’s pissing me off, because he could have used all that strength to be Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson. I don’t know if that’s a good thing to say, but that’s what his potential was. The way he handled it, I never saw him show weakness. He just handled it. And I knew it was killing him.”

  We didn’t have that conversation then. He was right, though. It was killing me. The spring games arrived, and little had been solved: the fastball was moody, the curveball was a safety net, the results were a moving target. And I’d be damned if I wasn’t making that team out of camp, if I wasn’t going to keep throwing, if I wasn’t going to find a way.

  I have one very vivid memory of the final month of spring training. I was the starting pitcher that afternoon. The start went exceptionally poorly. Before the first pitch, standing on the mound, looking around, the ball in my hand, I could hear the blood draining from my head. It was coming. I could breathe all I wanted. I could count backward. Think positive thoughts. Didn’t matter. I was standing on the tracks, fearful.

  This is gonna be bad, I thought. Right foot back…

  It was bad. Also, it was short.

  Dunc met me at the top step.

  “OK, Ank,” he said. “You all right?”

  I stopped in front of Dunc and looked him in the eye. My mouth opened. Nothing came out. Not a word. Not a sound. Not a sob. I’d lost my ability to throw a ball and, in that moment, the power to put it into context. Not even “Yeah, Dunc, I’ll be fine. Get ’em next time.” Not even “Hell if I know.”

  I shrugged at Dunc. He nodded and patted me on the shoulder. I sat on the bench, lowered my head, heard the game but didn’t see it, and considered how I’d just suffered a full-blown panic attack. I checked my breathing, checked my heart. And it wasn’t over yet.

  Somehow I made the team out of camp. The Cardinals were trying to believe, so I would too. I’d be the fifth starter for the 2001 season, behind Darryl Kile, Andy Benes, Matt Morris, and Dustin Hermanson. My first start would be April 8 in Arizona, our sixth game.

  I was scared to death.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  I made six major-league starts that season. One of them, the first, went pretty well, because I was drunk.

  On a Sunday afternoon in Arizona against the Diamondbacks, I’d make my first real appearance since the previous fall. I’d had six months to prepare. Physically. Emotionally. I had Harvey on my side. I had my self-help books. I had all my little brain exercises, my breathing exercises, down. All that had to follow was for me to walk to the mound in a big, full ballpark, stand in front of those people and the television cameras and my teammates, bury the past, throw strikes, and start winning my career back. My life back.

  I knew it wasn’t going to work. For days leading to that start, I knew. The nightmares came every night. I stared at the television in a hotel room in Phoenix early Sunday morning, hours before a bus would take me to defeat. All that walking around with a smile on my face for the past seven weeks, throwing decently and hanging on that, throwing po
orly and dismissing that, promising better, would be exposed that afternoon at Bank One Ballpark against a team that, in seven months, would beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. We’d fly to St. Louis after the game. I packed my suitcase, stuffed my books into a carry-on bag, and rolled it all to the curb in front of the hotel. The mood was light. After three losses to start the season, we’d won two in Arizona. Now we’d have to get past Randy Johnson, who’d won the second of what would be four consecutive Cy Young Awards the season before. He was the best pitcher in the game. Tall and left-handed, he’d overcome early-career wildness to become this beast of a pitcher. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was a beast of a pitcher trying to overcome early-career wildness myself, except Randy probably drove to the ballpark that morning confident about his chances and singing along to the radio. All I felt was dread. I felt the Thing.

  The ballpark is enormous. What started as just a roof in the distance in a few minutes filled the bus window.

  “One hundred,” I said to myself. “Breathe.”

  “Ninety-nine.… Ninety-eight.… Ninety-seven.”

  “Breathe.”

  Inside, I tried to lose myself in the routine of game day. The scouting reports. The conversations with Dunc and Mike Matheny. The music inside the headphones. The nap that wouldn’t come. Early games from the East Coast on TV. The clock on the wall was relentless, bearing toward game time.

  In the hour before I’d have to go out and prove to everyone that I was exactly the same pitcher who’d unraveled on those mounds in October, I grew desperate. Weeks before, over a beer with a buddy, he’d said, “Why not drink before you pitch?” I’d laughed, then admitted I was sometimes better against the wall with a beer in my hand. The alcohol, I don’t know, maybe it quieted my head. Maybe I didn’t care quite so much. I hadn’t thought about it since. I’d not started a big-league game yet either. I had to fight.

  And if I couldn’t bury the monster, I would drown it.

  “Hey,” I said to Darryl Kile, “think you could get me a bottle of vodka?”

  It was humiliating.

  He returned with a full bottle. Something cheap. No judgment. I shrugged.

  “Do what you gotta do, kid,” he said. “I understand.”

  With everyone on the field stretching, and so in a clubhouse empty but for me and a couple very curious clubbies, I took a few long pulls, felt the warmth and reassurance as the alcohol seeped into my bloodstream, and poured the rest into a water bottle, which I carried with my glove and cap to the dugout. It wasn’t about gaining an edge but softening the edge. I couldn’t trust me. Nobody could. But I could trust a water bottle filled with vodka beside me on the bench. I could trust a good, hard buzz.

  The Diamondbacks scored two runs in the first, both on a Matt Williams home run, but I didn’t walk anyone. By the third inning, we were ahead, 4–2.

  The ball was jumping out of my hand. I came off the mound exhilarated. I’d struck out Tony Womack and Reggie Sanders to end the second inning and Luis Gonzalez to start the third, then gotten mis-hit groundouts out of Matt Williams and Greg Colbrunn. Right through the heart of their order.

  Holy shit, I thought. I’m back. I’m fuckin’ back!

  Randy Johnson wasn’t as sharp as he could be. The problem was, I was starting to sober up. I’d walked two in the second inning and gotten out clean, then gone straight to the dugout and my water bottle. The monster was coming, and I fought it back with a few squirts of vodka, then a few more. I laughed at the absurdity of it and, while locked in a battle for my nerves, managed to have a good time playing baseball. I batted three times, all three against Johnson, fully aware that Johnson and his three-quarter delivery were not always safe for a sober, focused left-handed hitter, and here I was an unsober left-handed hitter. I did get a bunt down. And I did manage a walk. And I did score a run.

  We won, 9–4. I threw one hundred pitches over five innings. I struck out eight Diamondbacks and walked three, then went straight to the clubhouse and brushed my teeth and gargled whatever greenish liquid I could find. I was 1–0. I’d found a way, and it wasn’t the perfect way, but it would have to do for now. I slept hard on the flight back to St. Louis that night.

  Six days later, the strategy hadn’t changed for a Saturday-afternoon game against the Houston Astros—fastballs, curveballs, and vodka. Survival, man. The monster wouldn’t fight fair, so neither would I. Protective of me, the Cardinals had me warm up inside, not in the bullpen, where everyone else warms up. Just like spring training, they’d hide the fragile me until there was no way around it. At some point I’d have to come out and pitch.

  I went another five innings, not as strong as the last five. I walked five, gave up four runs. We lost. And as I sobered up in the clubhouse, I wondered if I could continue like this. I’d thrown off the monster for a hundred or so pitches, but I could feel it adapting to the new 80-proof game, hardening itself against the vodka. What would I do, drink more vodka? Two bottles next time? And after that? Was this sustainable?

  “Do what you have to do, Ank,” Harvey said, just like Darryl had said, maybe amused at the tactic and definitely concerned for the consequences. “Just know it’s not real.”

  That word again—real. Whose real? Mine? The box score’s? The Cardinals’? My career’s? Real was in the newspaper the next morning. Did you win or lose? Those nightmares seemed real. They were real enough for me. The sight of Mike Matheny pulling off his mask and racing to the backstop, that was real. Zero wild pitches in Houston. One back in St. Louis. Was that fantasy?

  “Real,” I told Harvey, “and the rest of it is getting a little blurry right now. I have to pitch. This is how I can.”

  “Ank,” he said, “it’s still there. You’re not winning. You’re stalling.”

  Damn if Harvey wasn’t always right. My next start was in Houston. I had six days to prepare. I reminded myself it was me who had beaten the Diamondbacks. Me who’d survived October, and a winter of doubt, and a torturous spring training to outpitch the great Randy Johnson. My stuff had gotten those hitters out. Even in the next start, between the five walks, I’d struck out six Astros. The pitcher was in me still.

  “OK, Harvey. I’ll try. I’ll try again.”

  This time in Houston, I went in alone. No bottle. No secrets. No pending hangover. Just me and the monster and the Astros.

  I got clobbered. Over three innings, there were five walks. I hit two batters. And I all but gave up on my fastball, which had become too unpredictable, even by my new standards. If I threw seventy-five pitches, I’d guess fifty-five of them were curveballs. I was lost again. Totally, miserably lost. Defenseless.

  When the game was over, I was waiting for Tony La Russa in his office behind the dugout at Enron Field. I’d had a couple beers. Tony had tried to push me back into the fourth inning. The first guy singled. The next guy, Craig Biggio, I hit. That was enough. For two hours I sat near my locker and listened to the Astros keep scoring. The cheering hardly stopped. By the time La Russa had come to get me in the fourth, I was down to one pitch I had any faith in. He’d said something encouraging as we waited for a relief pitcher to come in from the bullpen. So had Mike. The roar in my head drowned them out. I could see their mouths moving and feel the pats on my back as I turned to leave.

  A beer in my hand, defeated, I sat on the floor in Tony’s office. Reporters would soon be allowed into the clubhouse, and I needed to talk to Tony first. I wiped away tears, but they wouldn’t stop.

  “You all right?” he said.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” I told him for the first time. “You’ve got to send me down. My arm is going to blow out. I don’t know where my fastball’s going, and I can’t throw all those curveballs. It’s embarrassing. I need to go down and work on it.”

  “Listen,” he said, “are you going to be OK?”

  “I’m going to be fine. I just need to get out of here.”

  “Go home,” he said, “and think about it and tell me how you feel
in the morning.”

  “All right,” I said.

  Home was a hotel room in Houston. Just me, a king-sized bed, a TV, and the new real. And a phone next to the bed.

  “Why do you think this happened?” Harvey asked.

  “I don’t care why, Harvey,” I said. “I just want to fix it. Just give me the steps. One, two, three, four, five, six. I can fix it.”

  “It’s not your fault, remember,” he said.

  Harvey said that a lot. When he sensed I was beaten, or mostly beaten, he got off the baseball and into life. Real life. I was alone in a hotel room, which was fine with me, being away from friends who by their presence would remind me of the disaster I’d created of a baseball game. Harvey didn’t like it, I could tell. I had a baseball career to salvage. He had a life—mine—to mend.

  “I know, I know,” I said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Harvey would have his two fingers of bourbon in the late afternoon, so I’d call then, usually just before batting practice, when I knew his day was about over and he was relaxed.

  “You having your drink?”

  “You know I am.”

  “A tough one last night, Harvey.”

  “Aw, I seen it. Be good to yourself.”

  “OK, Harv. You go easy on that bourbon.”

  “Heh-heh. I’m good, Ank. And, hey…”

  “I know, I know. It’s not my fault.”

  I was always going to beat it. Always. Somehow, some way, I wasn’t going to quit, not ever. The drinking hadn’t worked, so I’d done something else. Then that hadn’t worked. I was running low on ideas. My confidence, what little remained, was shot. I stayed up all night, which solved the nightmare problem. So, I asked myself, what now? Are you going to walk away? If you do, will you ever be back? You’re really going to surrender?

  No. I wasn’t. You’re going to drag your butt back in there tomorrow. You’re going to run stadium steps. You’re going to make yourself watch that horror film video. You’re going to do what pitchers do to be better. You’re going to outlast it.