When the baseball season starts back up tomorrow, there are going to be all kinds of storylines to follow.

 

Can Albert Pujols win the first Triple Crown since 1967?

 

Will the trading of Roy Halladay change the landscape of the National League pennant race?

 

Will the National League Wild Card really come from the NL West?

 

These are all great stories, and I can’t wait to see how they play out (especially if Halladay ends up on the Cardinals).

 

But there’s another story that’s weighing on my mind. It’s not about records, pennants, or the drama of October.

 

It’s about Rick Ankiel.

 

Most people know the basic outlines of the Ankiel story, but the basic outlines won’t do. To truly appreciate the tragedy of Rick Ankiel, you need the details.

 

A second-round pick by the Cardinals out of Port St. Lucie High School in Florida, Ankiel was as can’t miss as can’t miss got.

 

Combining a rocket fastball, heavy sinker, and devastating hook, Ankiel was the high school player of the year, drafted in the second round and signed for $2.5 million, fifth highest ever at the time.

 

He was a full-time big league starter at age 20.

 

He was second in the Rookie of the Year voting.

 

He had earned so much faith as a rookie that Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sent him, at 21 years old, to the mound to face the great Greg Maddux and the Atlanta Braves in Game One of the 2000 National League Division Series.

 

But what happened in the third inning of that game can only be categorized as a legendary meltdown.

 

Competing on the grandest stage short of the World Series itself, Ankiel imploded, throwing five wild pitches, walking four, and allowing four earned runs. 

 

With another terrible start against the Mets in Game Two of the NLCS and an equally bad relief appearance in Game Five of that series, Ankiel finished the 2000 playoffs with nine wild pitches, 11 walks, and seven earned runs allowed in just four innings.

 

Ankiel was permanently damaged goods. The Cards tried to hide him by throwing bullpens off on hidden fields and limiting media access, but there was no use. Ankiel’s mind was broken, and not even legendary sports doctor James Andrews could fix that.

 

After fits and starts and losing the better part of two seasons to injury, including Tommy John surgery in 2003, Ankiel finally called it quits on his pitching career in 2005.

 

Normally, that would be the end. If it were, it would be a sad story, but not a terribly interesting one. Young phenoms flame out all the time. It’s a sad fact of the game. Just ask Mark Prior.

 

But here is where we get into the Hollywood part of the story.

 

Ankiel didn’t just quit and walk away like so many burnouts before him. Instead, he actually became a legitimate outfield prospect.

 

By August of 2007, Ankiel was leading the Pacific Coast League in homers with 32 in just 102 games. Once Cardinals outfielder Scott Spiezio was forced away from the game with a drug addiction, it was time for Ankiel’s triumphant return to the Major Leagues.

 

You couldn’t have scripted it any better: A packed Busch Stadium crowd gave Ankiel a standing ovation prior to his first at-bat. After he hit a three-run jack in the seventh, the place exploded like it was Mark McGwire’s 62nd.

 

This was love.

 

Newspaper columnists gushed, sports talk radio buzzed, and TV newscasts spliced together images of Ankiel’s homers and scenes of Robert Redford playing Roy Hobbs in one of the greatest sports hero movies of all time.

 

The Flameout was now The Natural.

 

If this was Hollywood, that’s where the story would have ended. That’s where he rides off into the sunset, a hero reborn with a pretty blonde on his arm.

 

Cue the music and roll the credits. There’s not a dry eye in the house.

 

But that’s not where it ended.

 

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