Rick Ankiel Drank A Bunch Of Vodka Before A Game Because Of The Yips

Rick Ankiel decides time is right to tell story of his battle with ‘the monster’

“The yips” — which has become sports slang for difficult-to-overcome nervousness — has threatened the careers of many baseball players throughout the game’s history. Ankiel describes the feeling, saying he felt “like I was standing on someone else’s legs. Throwing with someone else’s arm. Thinking with someone else’s brain. The ball would do what it wanted, not what I wanted.”

“Before that game…I’m scared to death. I know I have no chance. Feeling the pressure of all that, right before the game I get a bottle of vodka. I just started drinking vodka. Low and behold, it kind of tamed the monster, and I was able to do what I wanted. I’m sitting on the bench feeling crazy I have to drink vodka to pitch through this. It worked for that game. (I had never drunk before a game before). It was one of those things like the yips, the monster, the disease…it didn’t fight fair so I felt like I wasn’t going to fight fair either.”

The malfunctioning lefty spent almost four years in the Minor Leagues battling the demons in his head, trying to learn how to pitch again. Though he eventually made it back to a big-league as a reliever for a brief stint in 2004, Ankiel never recaptured the magic that had once made him the game’s top young arm. So, in the Winter of 2005, Ankiel retired from baseball.

But the St Louis Cardinals organization had an idea. They wanted Ankiel to give it one last go … as a hitter.
Ankiel had always loved hitting, so he accepted the offer and showed up to Spring Training in 2005 as an outfielder. Suddenly, all that mental exhaustion and all of those yips he’d been fighting disappeared.

After a few years mashing his way up the Minors, the Cardinals deemed their former phenom ready for The Show. And so, on August 9, 2007, almost seven years after his initial encounter with the yips, Ankiel made his glorious return, homering in his very first game back.

He played seven more seasons as the bigs outfielder, going on to gain the bizarre distinction of being only the second player in MLB history to hit at least 75 career homers and strike out at least 200 batters. The other player was Babe Ruth. He also repurposed his once-transcendent pitching arm into one of the game’s most feared outfield cannons.

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