Friday, August 10, 2007

The Comeback Kid

Baseball is easily my favorite sport. I love pretty much everything about it, and I love the great baseball stories. Last night Rick Ankiel added a chapter to baseball lore.

I can remember watching the playoff game against the Braves when Ankiel just completely lost his stuff. It was a really sad story because he was so young and seemed to have such a promising career ahead of him. As the linked Wikipedia article documents, Ankiel made a few unsuccessful attempts to return to The Show as a pitcher. Then a few years back he decided to switch to the outfield. I became an instant fan and was really hoping to see Ankiel roaming the Cardinal outfield someday. Well that someday was last night. And not only did Ankiel return, but he blasted a 3-run homerun in his first professional game as an outfielder. I got goosebumps just typing about it!

The only sad part of this story is that it took a drug problem by Scott Spiezio for Ankiel to get his second chance.

4 comments:

cee.dub said...

he hit another home run today!

Zack and Jenny said...

he hit two today!

petecobb99 said...

i smell a made-for-tv movie!
what a story--i hope he can keep it up!

petecobb99 said...

he threw 5 wild pitches in one inning!, and he somehow put that, and his pitching career, behind him, to get to where he is now...incredible story...