The Unique Story of Rick Ankiel

Rick Ankiel’s career started off like most others, he was drafted out of high school in the second round of the 1997 draft. He worked his way through the minors pretty quickly, making his MLB debut in August of ‘99, in the 9 starts he made that year he posted a 3.27 ERA. He came back in 2000 and put up a 3.50 ERA in his rookie year, and finished second in ROTY voting. It was in the 2000 playoffs where it all went south for Ankiel. Ankiel took the mound in game 1 of the NLDS vs the Braves, the first 2 innings went smoothly but the third inning is where it went downhill, in that inning Ankiel couldn’t throw a strike. In that inning he walked 6 and had an astounding 5 wild pitches. Manager Tony La Russa decided to give him another chance in the NLCS, it didn’t get any better, this time in only 1.1 IP Ankiel walked 5 and had 4 wild pitches. After that start he was done for the postseason, he came back the next year and had the same issue he just could not throw a strike in only 24 innings he walked 25 batters.

It was later found out that Ankiel was dealing with the yips. The yips are described as a sudden or unexplained loss of the ability to execute certain functions. There have been many cases of the yips over the years, Jon Lester can’t throw to first, Markelle Fultz forgot how to shoot and even Simone Biles in this years olympics got the gymnastics version of the yips called the twisties.

He decided he was done with pitching and wanted to transition to being an outfielder, Ankiel worked his way all the way back up through the minors and finally in 2007 he made his debut in the outfield. He went on to have a successful career in the outfield. In 2008 he even hit 25 homers. Ankiel would hang up the cleats in 2013 at the age of 33. He would try to make a comeback in 2019 but was eventually unsuccessful.

Overall this is an inspiring story of how a man overcame adversity and figured out a new way to have success at a Major League level.