by Rick Ankiel
It was early March 2005. Four full baseball seasons had passed since my arm had deserted me. Another was in sight. I’d tried to be a pitcher again. I’d tried a million ways. I didn’t have a million and one in me.
I’d been talking a lot with Harvey. More than usual. In my line of work, having a psychologist was viewed as a foundational weakness. My psychologist became one of my best friends and in many ways replaced the real father I despised and hoped never to see again.
I went to bed one night thinking I’d had enough of baseball. The next morning brought nothing in the way of regret. So I would go to my boss, shake his hand, and tell him. I was not going to be a superstar baseball player, an unfortunate outcome he likely suspected. I was not going to be a baseball player at all. I did not have a plan for the rest of my life. I did not have a plan for that afternoon.
The ritual that led to my resignation was rigid and comforting. I followed it that morning, though for the first time since before I could remember it would not lead to a day at the ballpark. Assuming I slept, which I probably didn’t, I was in the kitchen at dawn. I liked dawn for the way I remembered it smelling, that being before the accident and the concussion, which jostled just enough in my head to kill my sense of smell. I was thirteen then, being towed on a skateboard behind a go-cart, an event that concluded predictably with a crash, a trip to the emergency room, and my being down one sense. Twelve years later, everything still smelled like the interior of a vacant warehouse, which, at the moment, sort of described my baseball career. I liked dawn because of its coolness, how it foretold—demanded, even—a fresh start, a ball’s-stuck-in-the-tree do-over. Mostly, I liked dawn because it wasn’t night, and so I wasn’t staring at the ceiling or watching TV or reading a self-help book or listening to my breath while waiting for dawn. I’d spent a decent percentage of my young adulthood waiting for the rest of the world to get up, though I don’t know why; I wasn’t altogether eager to have the day start anyway.
From the kitchen I could not see the Loxahatchee River, but I knew it was there, and I could sense the snook coming to life. Snook season runs pretty close to baseball season, and I loved them both. While the baseball took me away from the snook, the snook were kind enough to reciprocate. At that point, I was in the business of finding places for my head to go. So I lingered on the snook, the carnivorous beast that swam in salt and brackish water, that hit the hook with authority, that ran hard, that wouldn’t go easy, that wouldn’t quit until it was hauled onto the boat and convinced to quit.
Then I’d go quit. I’d call it “retirement.”
Egg whites spat at me from a frying pan. I poured molten bananas, strawberries, and oats from a blender, then thumbed my phone.
“Hi, Ank.” Harvey was in North Carolina. He too was an early riser whose head was well into the day before the rest of him was.
“Today’s the day,” I said. “I’m going to do it.”
“OK, Ank. You go do it. We’ll talk later. You good?”
“I’m freakin’ sexy. See ya.”
I ate the breakfast that would get me through a morning of spring training, that on that day would instead get me through the drive across Jupiter, Florida, to Roger Dean Stadium, the walk to Tony La Russa’s office, the walk back to the parking lot, and the drive home. The whole thing would take an hour, tops. My not-quite-eight-year professional career, from the second round of the 1997 draft to this—I wasn’t quitting, I wasn’t surrendering, I was retiring, dammit—would be gone in a thin smile and a promise to stay in touch. Nobody would try to talk me out of it, I knew.
The date was March 9. The day was Wednesday. Maybe, so far, the best day of my life. One of the better ones I could remember anyway. I’d pitched my way back to ten big-league innings the prior September in what I had assumed was a comeback. Yet as those innings faded, I began to understand them as something else. They were my opening to say good-bye. I could not leave the game in the middle of an inning, three runs in, base runners everywhere, my fastball haywire again. I could not leave because I was afraid to get on a mound. I wouldn’t go out on an operating table and wouldn’t use a fouled elbow as an excuse. I had to get back, to prove that I could, and if not as what everyone—myself included—had once expected of me, then something at least presentable. I’d leave when I was ready. I’d leave only after I’d proven it was possible.
For my last minutes as a ballplayer, I wore shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. I backed the BMW, bought with ballplayer money, away from the house, bought with signing-bonus money. From the beach, past US-1, over the Indiantown Bridge, gauging the light, passing on the shortcut behind the Publix plaza, left on Alt A1A, right on Frederick Small Road, past Military Trail, through the roundabout, along the back fields of the baseball complex, right on University Boulevard, and into the players’ lot. Country was on the radio. This was the routine readying for baseball. Hi to the security guy. A choice of doors: the one that led into the big-league clubhouse or the one that shot past the trainers’ room and to the manager’s office. The latter was preferable that day.
I’d been gathering the courage to do this, if not every minute of every day then often enough over the past few weeks. 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.
Tony La Russa was behind his desk. He wasn’t surprised to see me. Most mornings I’d lean into his office and say some smart-ass thing, something to start the day and show him I was good to go and not an emotional wreck, and Tony would look up over his reading glasses and bark a response as I laughed and continued down the hall.
This time I entered the office and closed the door.
“What’s up?” he said.
I sat across from him.
“I can’t do it anymore.”
Just like that. I can’t. More, I won’t. None of us could do it anymore. Not me. Not him. Not Dave Duncan, the pitching coach. Not Harvey. Not Scott Boras.
I. Can’t. Do. It. Anymore.
Every word a hammer strike, loud and final. Each report echoing in my head as my old life vanished, my old dreams with it, dying of self-inflicted chaos. But now the words were free, sprung from a single pitch and the four years spent trying to take it back. My eyes were dry.
Little in baseball surprised Tony. If it did, he didn’t much let on. The stone face, the sunglasses at night, the man carried himself like he’d seen it all. Probably because he had. He looked into my eyes for what seemed like a long time. This had blindsided him. I didn’t have anything left to say and didn’t fumble with an explanation. It was all too obvious.
“You sure?” he asked.
“I’m sure.”
“Give it a day,” he said, again.
He was concerned. I didn’t want him to be concerned. He didn’t really want me to give it a day. It was something to say when there was nothing to say.
“I don’t need a day.”
I hoped I wasn’t disappointing him, but it wouldn’t change anything if I were. We shook hands. I left through the same back door so there’d be no good-byes, other than a wave to the now curious security guard. Country back on the radio, left on University, past the back fields, the other way on the roundabout, past Military Trail, left on Frederick Small, right on Alt A1A, over the bridge, down US-1, to the beach, to my couch. Done.
They�
�d pack the stuff in my locker and dump it on my doorstep. I didn’t have much use for gloves and spikes and old T-shirts anyway. The Cardinals would void my contract. There’d be an announcement of some sort, a press release, maybe I’d talk to the press. Maybe not. I’d disappear. Spring training would go on, and the season would come, but not for me, and all my friends would continue their careers, but not me. I lay down. The phone rang. It was Harvey. I was fine, I told him. Really fine, I said. Promise. I’m not depressed. I’m not cracking up. I’m fine. No, nobody’s here with me. It’ll be fine. I’m fine. Thanks, I said, for checking in, then set the phone on the coffee table.
I could breathe again. I could smile and mean it. That thing on my shoulders and in my neck, that heavy and dark and relentless burden that in four and a half years had grown with my ERA, it was gone. My head was clear. So clear, I had to laugh. By giving up what I’d thought was my life, I knew I’d gotten my life back. I knew it in that moment. I’d traded baseball for me. I’d miss it, sure. But it wasn’t for me. Not anymore.
I didn’t turn on the TV. I didn’t turn on the radio. I sat on my old brown couch, happy to be happy, happy for the silence in my head, happy to be free, at twenty-five, of the only thing I had ever really wanted.
In Asheville, North Carolina, a phone rang, and Harvey picked up. Years later, Harvey recounted the conversation to me.
“Scott,” he said.
“Well, he did it,” Scott Boras said. “He told the Cardinals. He’s not going back.”
“I know,” Harvey said.
“How’s he seem to you?”
“He said he’s fine.”
“What do you think?”
“He said he’s fine.”
“I’ll call Walt,” Scott said, meaning Walt Jocketty, the Cardinals’ general manager.
“You better be right,” Harvey said.
“There’s no more monster,” Scott said. “We killed it. It’s gone.”
“All I’m saying is, this better work.”
“It’ll work.”
“If it doesn’t…”
“Harvey,” Scott said, “trust me.”
“Trust you? You kidding? You’re more messed up than any of ’em.”
Their usual dance. They shared a laugh. Maybe Scott needed Harvey more than I did, which was saying something.
“Gotta go, Harvey. I’ll stay in touch.”
They’d been plotting this for months. They’d had a plan for when I couldn’t do it anymore. They’d hidden it from me.
I let my mind drift to the backyard games in Fort Pierce, Florida, to the early ball games at Sportsman’s Park and then Port St. Lucie High School, the draft, a couple years in the minor leagues, my big-league debut for the Cardinals in Montreal a month after my twentieth birthday, my first home run, an opposite-field shot on a cold, damp night in St. Louis. The road to the major leagues had seemed wide and empty, without a speed limit. Damn, was that me back there? Had I ever been that fearless? That sure of myself?
Occasionally, as word spread that I’d gone home for good, my teammates—former teammates—would wake my phone with a text message.
“All good,” I’d send back.
Yeah, all good.
“Good luck,” they’d say.
“You too.”
“We’ll get a beer.”
“Sounds good.”
We probably wouldn’t. I wasn’t part of that anymore.
I closed my eyes again and considered the path to here, to a couch in Jupiter and a Wednesday morning in March with nothing to do but reassure those kind enough to reassure me. And to say good-bye. They’d go off to their lives, my former life, and I’d get on with mine, which at the moment had nothing to do with baseball and everything to do with a fluffy cushion under my head and, I didn’t know, maybe some lunch or something. I could do whatever I wanted, and I’d never have to chase the fastball I’d once had, or stand in the middle of a ballpark in disgrace as my catcher spun and sprinted to the backstop, or fear my next pitch, or live up to the player I had been. I wouldn’t have to be the guy who used to be Rick Ankiel anymore. Maybe I’d sleep again. The nightmares could go haunt some other poor schmuck.
On my couch, I was content. The poster on the living room wall behind me was from Scarface, one of my favorite movies. Al Pacino lazed in a huge bathtub, bubbles everywhere. He pulled on a cigar. In a lower corner, the words “Who do I trust? Me.” I believed that again. It had been a while.
I’d just spent better than four years trying to trust everyone, anyone but the man on the couch. But I knew where my guy Tony Montana—Pacino’s character—was coming from. I’d known that feeling once, forever ago. I’d been untouchable. They’d said I was gifted, that my arm was special. At twenty, I was certain of it too. More than certain. At twenty-one I stood on a pitcher’s mound in a full stadium in game one of a playoff series, and from that height I could see the future everyone talked about, that I’d wished for myself. That I’d worked my ass off for.
From a slightly lower vantage point—my feet up, head back, eyes closed, late-morning sun on my face—I understood something similar. I was in control of my future again. So I wasn’t going to be a special baseball player. I’d live up to practically no one’s expectation of me. I probably wasn’t going to be rich. There’d be no yacht, no mansion on the water, no easy life through middle age or for the next generation of Ankiels. There’d be no World Series game seven, me against some big ol’ hairy dude, the crowd loud, the moment taut, me knowing I was born for the next pitch. Turned out, it was the next pitch that had run me off. I’d have to get a job, maybe go to school, sort out a life that had melted away on that mound and hadn’t stopped bleeding until now. It all sounded so… wonderful.
In the beginning, when the monster was in its infancy, Dave Duncan had hope for me. A decent catch-and-throw catcher in the 1960s and ’70s, he had become the most respected pitching coach in the game. Duncan turned out Cy Young Award winners and World Series champion pitching staffs, and he had a particular touch with pitchers who’d been successful but had somehow lost their way. He didn’t say a lot, but the few words he chose were enough. His reputation was as a coach who’d turn rookies into men, average pitchers into good pitchers, good pitchers into great pitchers. The ones who came along great, he’d keep them great.
Then there was me. He tried. He knew pitching mechanics. He understood the mind of the ballplayer. And he could sort through an opposing lineup, pick it apart, and present the strategy that would work in a few simple, encouraging sentences.
None of which prepared him for the can’t-miss prodigy who missed a lot. None of which prepared him for the monster.
“Dunc,” La Russa said to him that day, “Rick went home. He’s not coming back.”
Duncan shook his head and blinked his sad eyes. He’d seen it coming and thought it was for the best. He’d been bothered by the previous four seasons, by his inability to fix me, to set it right. He’d lost sleep himself. He had a pitching staff to deliver by opening day, and there was plenty to do that morning, but he’d allow a few moments for regret. There’d been days along the way, moments, really, a pitch here or there, when Duncan had allowed himself a drop of optimism. But the next day would come and bring another bucket of reality, which inevitably got kicked over, drenching everybody’s shoes again.
La Russa knew precisely what Duncan was thinking. They’d spent plenty of nights together considering ways to reconstruct me, and La Russa would wonder when the game might become fun again for me. He’d stand to the side and see me on a mound, watch me start my windup, and remember when he’d allowed himself to believe he was witnessing the next Bob Gibson, the left-handed version. Wasn’t that long ago, he’d muse. He would not have said it aloud, not in public, where such reflections would stalk a ballplayer to his grave. But, hell, I’d had as live an arm as La Russa had ever seen. The way I threw a baseball, it was as if the ball itself was alive and couldn’t wait to be excused from its temporar
y place in my hand. From the Rawlings factory, to the box with eleven other balls in it, to the ball bag, to the baseball glove, and then to my hand. These were merely transitional areas for a baseball on the nights I went out there and, a pitch at a time, tried to become something great.
They’d talked themselves out on the subject of me, and so in the brief silence between the manager and his pitching coach in the immediate aftermath of my departure, La Russa chose to accept it. He understood that this thing had ridden me long enough, that my really bad day had become countless worse ones. It was time for me to go, and for the organization to let go.
All things considered, I thought I was pretty well adjusted. I mean, I was screwed up and everything, I couldn’t throw a ball sixty feet without practically breaking out in hives, and I’d become expert in medicating my ghosts so at least I could survive the harrowing hours around the ball games. But, hey, fake it till you make it. To the end, I’d shown up every day, and worked to get it right and held on to the hope I’d make it, and now I was in my midtwenties and could think of no reason at the moment to get off the couch.
Harvey believed I was, his words here, that psychological tire. I’d been riding hard miles on that tire for four and a half years, and the tire was worn and road-weary and quite possibly dangerous. He also believed I would know when the journey, that being my career, was done. He’d never said, “Ank, it ain’t gonna happen,” even if he’d known it. And he did know it. He got me through the day, however, and then went to work on the next day, and he prepared me for what he knew was the inevitable.
Harvey would tell Scott the time was coming when the tire would blow. They had to be ready with an alternative to the lives I’d once had—the one I’d been chasing for four and a half years and the one I’d escaped before that. I thought Harvey was being my shrink, being my friend, being my father figure. He thought he was saving my life.
The phone rang. It was Scott. Geez, I thought, I’m fine. I picked up.