by Rick Ankiel
“You’re in a different place now, Ank,” Harvey said. “I can’t see the harm.”
So I called my father, invited him to my bachelor party, and saved him a seat on a bus that would ferry about a dozen of us to bars around town. This was to be a celebratory ride with some of the closest friends I had, a night for us to bond and laugh and forget about the real world for a while.
It wasn’t.
I was a grown man, different from the boy my father had abused with words and deeds, more courageous than the boy who’d seen his mother terrorized. I’d lived enough of my adulthood to understand I wasn’t always in charge, that all I could do was work hard, throw hard, and hope for the best. “It’s not your fault,” Harvey would say, and that’s different from “It’s not your destiny” or “There’s not a damned thing you can do about it” or “Eh, who cares?”
I cared. And I was in charge now. And he was here because I allowed it. He sat across the bus aisle, surrounded by men in their prime, young and strong. My father was an old man, and I sensed he knew it. Not in the years, maybe, but in the miles. He moved with an effort I didn’t recall. His laugh came from a place farther away, and the conversation left him behind, the context lost over a six-year prison term. His attempts at familiarity were forced and clumsy.
Within a few blocks, I knew I’d made a mistake. After a few beers, the mistake only got louder, and the man I remembered was sitting across from me. I, however, was not the son he remembered. It’s possible we came to that understanding in the same moment, that he would live forever in my eyes as the father who was cruel and selfish and, ultimately, forgotten. He hadn’t earned me as a son any more than he’d earned that night in the bus, toasting a woman I would love and marry and treat with dignity. There’s stuff you don’t get to say I’m sorry for.
“I’m sorry,” he said anyway, and I went cold.
The bus sighed to a stop at the curb. The music thumped from behind large windows, on the other side of which was a bar crowded with people laughing and carrying on. Yes, a night for celebration, and the whole town would celebrate with us, and my friends piled from the bus and across the sidewalk and into that place.
“Son,” he said.
“What?”
“We need to talk.”
“Now. You want to talk now. Tonight.” Not a question.
“I need to explain.”
So it was him, me, and up ahead somewhere a bus driver pretending not to listen.
His mouth moved, and I didn’t hear. I thought about his taking this night, my night, and making it his. Just like he’d taken my childhood. Like he’d made my baseball his baseball. My success had to be his success. My failures were somebody else’s.
His mouth moved, and I thought, This is all so dumb. Nothing had changed, except I wasn’t afraid and he wasn’t so sure of himself anymore. Nobody was screaming for her life. The cops were off chasing somebody else. My friends were inside having a grand time while I dealt with my father, and even years later, they’d remember the night on the bus and say, “We had a good time. We know you didn’t, but the rest of us did,” and they’d laugh at the absurdity of the guy who said he was sorry twenty years too late. At my bachelor party. I wasn’t mad. I was just over it.
I’d invited him out of obligation. I sat in a dark bus out of obligation. Those years were hard on him too, he said, and I listened out of obligation, for what I didn’t know. Maybe I was still hoping I was wrong about him, the evidence notwithstanding. Maybe I was hoping to protect my mother, best I could, that he’d behave if a relationship with his son were in the balance.
I was wrong.
I don’t miss him. I miss the notion of a father, though. The notion of a grandfather for my children, the man who’d put $20 in an envelope and scratch out, “Don’t spend it all in one place,” like an inside joke, out of kindness. I would’ve loved that.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
The road back to the big leagues, turned out, concluded with 270 miles due north on Interstate 55 in a maroon Ford F-150 pickup truck, Lory behind the wheel, me dozing beside her, a bat bag in the back.
We didn’t stop between Memphis and St. Louis. We hardly slowed down.
I walked into the clubhouse, and the men there stood and applauded. Most of them I knew. Some I didn’t. They clapped me on the back. I laughed and shook their hands and asked where they kept the bats.
I’d last been a major leaguer on October 1, 2004. I’d been a major leaguer for thirty-four innings, not even four full games’ worth, since the 2000 season, since the Thing came and got me.
When Lory wished me luck and let me out at Busch Stadium, it was the middle of the afternoon, August 9, 2007.
I was twenty-eight years old. A good part of my prime had been spent chasing the pitcher inside me. Unless, you know, it had been chasing me all along. It was complicated. The rest, the past couple years, was this. That is, chasing the hitter inside me. Chasing the big leagues again. Swinging hard. Hitting 32 home runs in 102 games at Triple-A Memphis. Kicking the crap out of the monster.
The night before, I’d been in Tacoma with the Memphis Redbirds. The flight back to Tennessee had been canceled. We wouldn’t leave until midnight. So we went to dinner, then we sat at the airport and waited. My teammates and I filled the time the way young, bored men generally fill the time: we drank beer. We were delayed a while.
Somewhere in and among the beers, Chris Maloney—“Hammer” to us—tapped me on the shoulder. Hammer was our manager and a very good man.
“Bull,” he said, which is what he called me, because Hammer was country like that, “you’re going to the Show.”
I looked Hammer in the eye, because I needed to be sure he hadn’t gotten this wrong, and I needed to be absolutely clear on what he’d said, and I replied, “What?”
“Yeah, Bull,” he said. “They want you there tomorrow night. You’re starting in right.”
Well, damn. I’d have another beer to that.
I called Lory. She said she was proud of me and that she’d be waiting for me at home.
I called Harvey. He said I’d be great. I called Scott. I called a man named Bob Brower, a former big-league outfielder who worked for Scott and had been a mentor when I needed one, then a friend when I needed one of those more.
I called my mother. She asked what time she should be in St. Louis.
We boarded at last, a single plane flight remaining in a comeback that had started on a couch in Jupiter, Florida, and across two and a half years overlaid in countless batting cages and batter’s boxes. This was the flight I thought about when the sliders were unhittable and the line drives were caught and my hands were so sore they begged for a day off. This was the flight Rick Eckstein and I talked about when we were done hitting, sometimes for two hours after games. He was a hitting coach, only much more than that. He was as obsessed as I was and worked as hard as I did. That meant off days. That meant we turned the lights out nearly every night. That meant long talks on what pitchers would see in me, and what they’d go after, and just how I was going to make up all the time I’d missed in the batter’s box. This flight didn’t happen without Rick Eckstein. The notion of this flight—out there somewhere—had replaced the nightmares. And so when it was time, I hauled a bag down the aisle, reached the appointed row, and between the two largest, hairiest people I’d ever seen discovered the sliver of a middle seat that would carry me back to the big leagues.
Hell, I would’ve flown on the wing.
I got skinny, squeezed in, put my head back, closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I’d be that much closer to right field at Busch Stadium.
“Ank.”
Chris Conway was our trainer.
I opened my eyes. We weren’t in Memphis. I could tell because my seat space was still full of oversized strangers.
“Ank, take my seat,” he said. “Got a big day tomorrow. You’ll need some rest.”
“Really? Where?”
“
Exit-row window.”
“Dude…”
There are some kind people in this world.
We flew through the night. When I reached Memphis, Lory had moved our stuff from the apartment to the truck. All of it. She was ready to go. I was nervous, but I smiled a lot. Scott Boras was right. Harvey Dorfman was right. I was right. I’d survived the cutters. I’d resurrected my game on the other side of the ball, discovered my arm was a lot more accurate from three hundred feet than it was from sixty, and learned to love being a ballplayer again.
I’d left a pitcher, returned an outfielder, and I was just, for the moment, so proud of myself. They’d wanted a tough kid, a product of his environment instead of a victim of it, a survivor, a young man who refused to walk away, who’d fight for his place in the world, and what they got was a right fielder who’d bat second—between David Eckstein, Rick’s younger brother, and Albert Pujols—against the San Diego Padres that night.
I wanted to be great. The goal from the start was not merely to make my way back to the big leagues but to go be somebody in the big leagues. Still, I couldn’t be great from Memphis. I couldn’t be great if nobody else believed. I couldn’t be great just because I tried hard and almost made it.
I’d called ahead to let the Cardinals know I’d be there and asked Rip Rowan, the clubhouse manager, if number 24 were available. Nope, I was told. Joe Pettini, Tony La Russa’s bench coach, had 24.
“Give me whatever, then,” I’d said. “Doesn’t matter. Just be sure it’s on a major-league uniform.”
I pulled open the door to a major-league clubhouse I’d sometimes wondered if I’d ever see again. The man on the lineup card was me. The uniform in the locker—white, red, and beautiful—had my name on the back. Along with the number 24. Good guy, Joe, I thought. I missed this, I thought: the camaraderie, the people who looked out for you. The selfless ones.
In the bottom of the first inning, I stood in the on-deck circle, twirling my bat, listening to the crowd call my name, trying not to relive the journey and failing. That mound and me. That backstop and me. That game. That pitch. And look at me now. I was here for a million reasons. I’d worked for it. I’d believed when there were no other options. Harvey had believed. Scott too. And Lory, who’d come along at just the right time.
The rush from Tacoma to Memphis to right field in St. Louis was due, in part, to the sudden absence of Scott Spiezio, a veteran outfielder who’d left to seek treatment for substance abuse. The number on my right arm, a white 32 in a circle of black, was for Josh Hancock, who’d died in an April car crash. I’d been on one of those minor-league buses when somebody in the back had said, “Hey, somebody on the Cardinals died,” and held up his phone, and what I thought of was Darryl Kile, his wife and his children, and how not being able to throw strikes amounts to nothing.
David Eckstein walked. It was my turn. With a deep breath, I walked toward the plate. A standing ovation rose around me. They’d ridden along for a good portion of this crossing. I’d have bet plenty of them had been here on that afternoon in October, a lifetime ago, too. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go, but I was glad they were here with me. It felt like home. Lory was up there too, and I could feel her eyes on me.
In front of almost forty-three thousand people, I stood in against Padres right-hander Chris Young and popped to shortstop. Two innings later, I struck out. In the fifth inning, I struck out again. In the seventh inning, the Cardinals led, 2–0. We’d scored earlier in the inning on, of all things, a wild pitch. Two runners were on base, two out, the veteran reliever Doug Brocail pitching. The count was two balls, one strike.
For some moments over the previous twenty hours, it would have been enough to be here, to pull a long breath of it. But not in that moment.
Brocail threw a slider. Down in the strike zone. Outside. I button-hooked it. We called that kind of swing “walking the dog,” a low, easy yank of the wrists. Just leaned over the plate, got the bat barrel on it, hit it hard, felt the contact, heard the contact, lost my top hand a little, pulled it to right field, and what I thought was I got your ass. Nothing personal, but Holy shit, I got your ass. A three-run home run. The following day, a Dodgers player—the Dodgers already were in town for the next series—said he’d heard a roar from his downtown hotel room and wondered what had transpired.
Almost seven years after it had happened the first time, I felt as though I’d left my body again. This time, however, there was no panic. My breaths were short. Not out of fear but in celebration. In joy. I could feel the game in my heart, in my soul. This time, I ran the bases on somebody else’s legs, watching from above. This time, I was cheering like the rest.
When it was done and I was in the dugout with my teammates again and the people out there wouldn’t stop chanting my name, and when I rose to the top step to say thank you to those who were kind enough to remember me, I felt no pain. What I felt was strength. Power. Energy. The game was good again. And I was good at it again.
My heart was smiling. And I wanted everyone to see.
The game wasn’t over, and yet Tony La Russa stood by the dugout steps, applauding and smiling. I didn’t recall ever seeing that before. Nobody could.
“Holy smokes,” Tony said to himself. “Holy smokes.”
Years later, he would recall it as “one of the happiest days of my life.” He went on, “I would tell my grandson or granddaughter, I’d say, ‘How much of a story do you want to know? Do you just want to know the baseball-player part of it, as exciting a pitching-potential superstar as your granddad has seen, sixty years of baseball, who, in your granddad’s opinion, got dealt a very unfair set of circumstances that curtailed that great potential? This guy had gifts of strength of character, determination that matched his physical gifts, and came back as an outfielder. He got back to the big leagues, and that’s a pretty damned good success. Yes, a very tough set of circumstances growing up, but not making excuses, not being a bum on the street, and here he is a father of two, so I love him. I just will never quit hoping that he had a good quality of life.’”
I stood before reporters afterward and went along with the story, because it was the only one I had. I kept it short. Lory was waiting. And I was tired, not just twenty-four-hour tired but seven-year tired, like I could sleep for a month.
“I was young, and I don’t think I understood the magnitude of what was going on,” I told them. “That seems like a long time ago. It’s ancient. I’m a different guy. I was so young then.”
I looked around, past the cameras.
“I guess we all were.”
We laughed.
I met Lory at the hotel and fell back on the bed. She handed me a glass of wine. We answered text messages from friends and marveled at the long, strange trip. While living those seven years, they’d seemed so slow, like such a grind, that nothing had ever been easy. From that hotel room, however, they’d passed in a snap of our fingers, like just yesterday I’d stood in that very ballpark sorting the real threats from the imagined ones. I had changed, I decided. I was a better version of myself. Lory was part of that. Harvey wouldn’t have had it any other way. I hoped he’d seen that home run. I was sure he had.
“Want me to turn this on?” Lory asked, holding the television remote.
She knew my aversion to sports-highlight shows. They’d had a little too much fun at my expense over the years.
“Why not?” I said.
They called me “the Natural.” We watched the same scene over and over, from this angle or that one, and I was struck by how happy I looked. More, how happy the people in the stands looked. Tony La Russa, mouth hanging open, as though he could hardly believe it. Jimmy Edmonds on the top step, the first to greet me at the dugout. Sitting finally on the bench not far from Adam Kennedy, who had signed back with the Cardinals, his smile nearly matching mine.
Two days later, I homered twice against the Dodgers in front of a huge crowd, including two guys I knew from middle school—Charlie Pratt and Jerry Sei
del—who’d flown in. By the end of August, I was hitting .328 with five home runs. I went to Houston, site of my misguided effort to circumvent the monster, and had three hits in a game, six in a three-game series.
Every day was better than the last.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
I was in the Mitchell Report, from the middle of page 243 to the top of page 244. The three paragraphs that reported my name and my use of human growth hormone (HGH) from January 2004 to December of that year are accurate. I bought HGH and injected it.
All true.
The Mitchell Report was the result of a nearly two-year investigation by George Mitchell, the former US senator. It was funded by Major League Baseball (MLB) and released in December 2007. About ninety players were named. I was near the top, you know, alphabetically. The stars were Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, José Canseco, Jason Giambi, and the shadowy men who supplied drugs to dozens of big leaguers.
The report was released on a rainy day in Manhattan, where Mitchell himself stood before reporters in a crowded Midtown hotel conference room and explained his findings. The commissioner, Bud Selig, sat nearby. This was big news. I didn’t pay it much mind.
Four years before, I’d undergone Tommy John surgery, the elbow procedure that puts pitchers’ careers back in order. Recovery requires about a year. During that period, a guy I knew at my gym suggested HGH, which he believed would promote healing. He gave me the address of a doctor in Palm Beach. I went home and looked up HGH. I read through MLB’s list of banned substances. No HGH. I read on the Internet about the benefits of HGH. It sounded new age. It would help my elbow heal faster and stronger. I wondered if it would heal my mind too.