Book review: The Phenomenon by Rick Ankiel and Tim Brown
Want a strong story of redemption? Of a triumph of sheer persistence over affliction? A true story that sounds at times like a tall tale?
The Phenomenon by Rick Ankiel chronicles the author’s wild ride through his unique 14-year major league baseball career. He began as a highly-talented pitcher, lost his control and confidence, and then slowly– and unsurely–crept back to major league status. To have the talent, and the resilience–and the need–to do all this seems incredible.
The book title actually speaks to two distinct phenomena: Ankiel the young pitcher, with generational talent, and then the illness or affliction (or whatever it is), that seemingly steals his promising future.
Ankiel’s subtitle tells us that we will read of “Pressure, the yips and the pitch that changed my life.” The pitch he refers to is one that departed his left hand in the baseball playoffs of 2000 and sailed over the catcher’s head. That one pitch was a harbinger of the sudden arrival of what Ankiel calls “the Thing” or “the Monster”, an amalgam of gripping uncertainty and stifling anxiety, creating an instant and complete loss of confidence about where his next pitch would go–thereby crippling his nascent pitching career.
He is hounded by questions bouncing inside his head, questions with no ready answers. Why does all this happen? …and so suddenly? And why to such a strong, highly-talented and heretofore supremely confident pitcher, playing in his first postseason game, in front of millions on national TV. And why is it not fixable? This is a 21-year old man whose young life has been defined by the saving rewards of his supreme baseball talent, prevailing over his extremely unstable upbringing at the hands of his abusive alcoholic father.
Ankiel documents well his journey to address the Thing. Once afflicted, he depends heavily on his agent, Scott Boras, and a psychologist Harvey Dorfman, who comes to serve as a father figure of sorts to the young pitcher.
Ankiel’s superior talent and impressive persistence prompt the St Louis Cardinals to stick by him over the next few years as he tries to deal with his mysterious malady, making his way up and down the minor league chain. Against strong odds, Ankiel makes it briefly back to the majors as a pitcher.
He notes: “It was work. And daily self-repair. From May 2001, my previous big league pitch, to my next in September 2004, I’d searched and fallen and healed and wondered who I was.”
On the heels of this exhausting path at the end of the 2004 season, he then decides to retire from baseball, at the tender age of 25.
But very quickly he chooses to re-enter the baseball fray, this time as an outfielder, still with the Cardinals. He succeeds after another 3 year trip through the minors, back to the majors, and has a decent second career as an outfielder. That is exceedingly rare.
(Many young pitchers fall out of baseball every year, because of injury, sickness, mental fatigue, etc. Almost never do any have the talent to return to the majors at a new position.)
In this re-telling, Ankiel delves again and again into the challenges he faced. The prose seems a bit redundant in that regard, although the relentlessness of the problem deserves its significant due. His initial slow victory over the Thing manifests itself in the form of a few more pitching performances, totaling only 10 innings, but 10 well-pitched innings that allow him to leave the pitching game satisfied, with his head up, that he had out-coped his problem.
I would have liked more detail on his decision to “un-retire”, a fork in the road that seems more important than the several pages so devoted. And, too, I would have enjoyed some photos to help tell this unusual story.
On Ankiel’s return to baseball, the now ex-pitcher notes with wonder that all the earlier pressure is gone. His newfound exuberance makes the new quest quite enjoyable for him–and his results showed it.
Ankiel sums up his career numbers as follows: pitched 242 innings, with 13 wins, along with 4115 innings played as a center fielder, batting .240 with 76 home runs. Certainly, none of those numbers is noteworthy taken alone. But in the dense context of his struggle with the yips, and allowing for the several years between his career “halves”, the numbers are downright remarkable.
More important, Ankiel is at peace with it all. He expresses gratitude for his wife and his two sons. He is good with his mother. And he has forgiven/forgotten his abusive father–and that might be the most significant phenomenon of all.
