No. 2000.10.03 · Wild Card Era
Rick Ankiel Loses the Plate
Rick Ankiel was twenty-one, a phenom, and ahead 6–0 in his first playoff start. In the third inning he threw five wild pitches and could not find the strike zone.
October 3, 2000, National League Division Series Game 1, the Cardinals against the Braves in St. Louis. Rick Ankiel was twenty-one and had just finished a rookie season in which he looked like one of the best young pitchers in the league. Tony La Russa handed him the ball. St. Louis scored six in the first. The choice looked like genius.
In the third inning the strike zone disappeared. Ankiel threw five wild pitches, walked four, and used 34 pitches, 20 of them balls. Atlanta scored four. He had thrown twelve wild pitches in 175 regular-season innings. Five of them arrived in one playoff inning. Baseball already had a name for this kind of sudden loss of command, after Steve Blass, the Pirates pitcher who won 19 games in 1972 and could not throw a strike in 1973. Ankiel's version arrived on television, in October, at 21.
He did not get the pitch back as a pitcher. He left the game for a time, came back as an outfielder, and had a real hitting career. The inning is in the catalog because it happened. It is not here as a joke about a young man whose arm stopped obeying him.
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