Comeback Story: Rick Ankiel

One of the most interesting stories of this baseball season is the comeback of Rick Ankiel, a still-evolving story.

Ankiel first got called up to the Major Leagues by the Cardinals as a 19-year-old pitcher in 1999. He had a fantastic rookie year in 2000 and looked like he was going to be one of the top pitchers in the league for years to come.

Then Ankiel completely melted down during the 2000 playoffs, throwing wild pitch after wild pitch in one of the worst cases of Steve Blass disease ever recorded. (Note that "Steve Blass disease" isn't a literal disease but rather refers to a pitcher suddenly not being able to throw strikes without any explanation and possibly due to entirely mental reasons. It has famously happened to Steve Blass [naturally], Mark Wohlers, and various other pitchers.)

After a few years trying to come back, Ankiel decided he was going to stop being a pitcher and try to return to the Major Leagues as an outfielder. He spent a couple of years in the minors and came back to the Major Leagues on August 9th. Ankiel proceeded to hit a homerun in his first game back and in today's game against the Dodgers, he has hit 2 more homeruns. Although it's not clear how long a career he'll have as an outfielder --- Ankiel is still just 28; he can hit the power with power, but he needs much better plate discipline --- this has already been an amazing comeback story. I expect we'll be seeing some sort of movie about this eventually (a la the Jim Morris movie, which I still need to see...). I'm annoyed he hit two homers against the Dodgers, but this is definitely a very cool comeback story.