Sports

Ankiel is recreating life, one more time

JUPITER, Fla. — Standing just beyond the reach of crashing waves at the Jupiter Beach Resort, Rick and Lory Ankiel faced the southern sky, holding hands in the dark.

Women slipped off their heels on the cool sand, watching the tide inch toward their gowns. A December breeze tossed Lory's sandy blond hair against her bare shoulders. Rick, in a single-button tuxedo, held her close as midnight and a new year quickly approached.

At the bride and groom's request, the wedding reception came first. Then, as 2006 faded away, the nearly 200 guests listened as man and wife exchanged vows before fireworks filled the inky sky.

Rick looks happy, thought Ankiel's father, Richard, and oh, how he wanted to see his son this way again. Smiling. Carefree. Content.

If only Richard could erase the image of a son's tearful and angry outburst to a father who had failed him when he needed him most. If only Richard could have stayed out of trouble to be there when the boy he pushed toward a major-league career melted down on a national stage.

No, their relationship never would be the same, but Richard took hope in small signs. They were fishing together again, although baseball rarely came up in conversation, and Rick was eager for another St. Louis Cardinals spring training camp to begin.

Then there was Rick's new bride, who fostered a refreshing outlook on the future. Richard watched the couple tenderly share cake and champagne. He's going to be a great husband. A great father.

What was it Lory told Rick? "Life is about recreating yourself." A driving force behind budding career

Rick Ankiel will talk about his career-threatening collapse. He'll talk about his wife and her role in his mental and physical rebirth. He'll talk about fishing, wine, iPods and fatherhood. He'll even talk about human growth hormone. He just won't talk about his father.

"I just don't know why it's relevant," he says, flatly. There is too much else to talk about, he says, and that's hard to argue.

Ankiel's eight-year odyssey in the majors has ranged from horrific to heartwarming. The most promising young left-hander this side of Sandy Koufax mysteriously loses his ability to pitch, sort of regains his form, then gives up the mound to take on a Ruthian task: recreating himself from pitcher to power hitter.

"He's on the verge of doing something historic," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa says of the 28-year-old who will likely be his opening-day center fielder.

Sitting silently in the stands at Roger Dean Stadium during Cardinals spring-training games is the man many credit for Ankiel's rise to the majors and blame for his swift and steep fall.

Richard Ankiel saw the potential almost from the time his son first pulled on a glove. Baseball became Rick's love and his father's obsession. There was little time for fishing or parties and movies with friends. Poor Little League outings meant wind sprints.

This is what Rick needs.

Maybe if his own father had been this tough, Richard thought, he wouldn't have spent his youth skipping classes to go surfing and fishing and sneaking off with friends for a smoke. Maybe if his father had cared enough to push him ...

"Maybe I could have played ball a little bit. Who knows?" Richard, 50, says now.

Richard was beaming during a long ride home after Rick's team won a Babe Ruth League state championship in Tallahassee one summer.

"You know that home-plate umpire? He said you're the best 14-year-old he's seen — ever."

"That's what all the dads tell their kids," Rick mumbled.

Before they reached their Fort Pierce home that night, Rick told his father he was done trading his time with friends for baseball.

"Oh, no, you're not!" Richard exploded.

If his son resented him, resented the game, so be it. Richard Ankiel figured the sacrifices were worth it if Rick reached the majors.

"He was tired of the grind. Tired of the game," Richard says one recent afternoon from his home in Fort Pierce. "Maybe I was hard on him, but I just didn't want him to quit before he knew whether he could do it. ...

"Maybe I just had those expectations and couldn't see it any other way. I saw other kids as good as him just decide they didn't want it and quit."

Rick Ankiel begrudgingly stuck it out. There were extra hitting and pitching sessions with his father as the sun set. As a boy, Rick was not always the best player on his team, but he certainly was the most fundamentally sound and aggressive.

"He was the smallest kid on the team forever," says family friend Guy McCuen. "Every kid on the team towered over him. But, man, could he hit, and you couldn't strike him out."

Richard's relentless training regimen eventually paid off. As a junior at Port St. Lucie High School, Rick's physique caught up with his skills.

He sprouted to 6 feet tall and the high leg kick and effortless windup his father taught him produced fastballs clocked at better than 90 mph. At the plate, his long swing, copied from Ken Griffey Jr. and honed by Richard Ankiel, launched balls over fences.

"I don't think he really wanted it until he started seeing the ball go for 370-foot homers and throwing 90 mph," Richard says of his son's own determination to make it to the bigs.

Ankiel began putting on shows all over South Florida. He struck out 14 in one game, hit three homers against perennial power Miami Lakes, and made a leaping catch at the left-field wall against St. Thomas Aquinas before nailing a runner racing home from third base.

"If he had been right-handed, he would have been our shortstop — that's how athletic he was," says Ankiel's high school coach, John Messina.

His father was a fixture behind the backstop, his son glancing in his direction just before a big pitch or after a strikeout. Richard was a drywall specialist and a fishing guide, and many considered him the classic overzealous sports dad.

Scholarship offers poured in and the pros came poised with contracts. The University of Miami promised Rick he could pitch and hit, and major-league scouts pegged him as a can't-miss prospect on the mound. The Cardinals drafted him in the second round in June 1997, and he received a $2.5 million signing bonus, then a franchise record.

Ankiel knew his hitting days were over, but he and his father agreed that pitching was his ticket to the majors, even if Rick wasn't necessarily content with putting down his bat for good.

"I don't think he was ever happy being a pitcher," Richard says. "He was so dominant a pitcher that pitching seemed the way to go. But was he really happy doing it? No. Anybody that knows him knows that."

In the minors, the Cardinals tinkered with the delivery that Richard had taken years to perfect. They wanted a lower, three-quarters release. One day, while working on his slider with the Class AAA team, Ankiel began to lose his instinctive form and, with it, his control.

Frustrated, he called his father, who was on a flight to Memphis the next day. Whatever strains their relationship endured, baseball was still the language father and son could speak.

"They were as tight as a father and son can be," McCuen, the family friend, says, "before his father went to jail."

Father's mistake 'quite a bomb'

Rick Ankiel stood by his father at Richard's darkest hour: his sentencing in federal court — 70 months in prison, and that was a gift.

Richard was one of four men sentenced in March 2000 for running a drug-smuggling ring that brought several hundred kilos of cocaine from the Bahamas to the Treasure Coast. He also had tested positive for cocaine while awaiting sentencing.

But prosecutors gave Richard a break because he became a key witness against his accomplices, including the one who received a life sentence. They were so pleased with Richard's cooperation they agreed to allow him 120 days to get his affairs in order.

To Rick Ankiel, it meant one last chance for his father to see him pitch in the majors in his first full season before going to prison. Richard had been there for Rick's debut, a five-inning, six-strikeout performance in an August 1999 call-up start against Montreal.

"He was on top of the world," Richard says.

Now he had special permission to fly to St. Louis to watch Rick pitch as a member of the starting rotation against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Then, a monumental disappointment.

Two days before the game, a motorist flagged down a Fort Pierce police officer at 1 a.m. and said a passenger in a green pickup had pointed a gun in his face. When police pulled up behind the truck, they saw the passenger toss what they later discovered was a loaded 9mm handgun. Richard Patrick Ankiel, a convicted felon who was prohibited from carrying a firearm, admitted it was his weapon.

Richard was supposed to leave that day for St. Louis, but a judge ordered jailed immediately. Whatever peace he and his son had made, however tentative the bond between them, it broke resoundingly with what Rick saw as a betrayal by his father.

"That was quite a bomb," Richard says.

At 20 years and 35 days, only three years removed from high school, Rick Ankiel was the youngest player in the majors that season. He was a fast-rising star fielding more questions about his father than his wicked fastball.

La Russa and several veteran teammates reached out, but Ankiel was just a kid trying to cope with enormous pressure.

"It was a little brother thing," says former Cardinals catcher Mike Matheny, "but sometimes it isn't easy being the little brother."

Ankiel was suffering, but he still came through on the diamond, finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting with an 11-7 record, 3.50 ERA and 194 strikeouts, which broke Hall of Famer Dizzy Dean's club rookie record.

La Russa felt comfortable and confident enough to name Ankiel the starter for the NL Divisional Series opener against Atlanta.

Everything was fine until the third inning, when Ankiel came apart in historic fashion. His notorious blowup included five wild pitches in one inning, the first time that had happened in 110 years. In the dugout, Matheny, who had caught Ankiel most of the year but was out of the series after accidentally cutting his hand with a hunting knife, could only feel for his friend.

"All I'll say is I would've loved to have been catching that day," Matheny says. "Anybody who cares for him would have wanted to be there for him."

Richard Ankiel, the only person who had been able to settle his son when things went wrong on the baseball field, never saw the game. He was on a prison work detail and didn't find out about Rick's collapse until he saw game highlights later in the day.

"I should've been there for him and I wasn't," Richard Ankiel says. "Even though he was already a young man, he was still a young man."

A fast fall from prominence

Rick Ankiel became a case study for athletes who suddenly, inexplicably, can no longer perform the basics of their craft. He simply could not control his once-fearsome pitches and was sent to the minors in 2001.

The following year, elbow pain forced him to sit out most of the season, and ligament-replacement surgery the next year put him out until the middle of 2004.

"You try not to let it consume you. But when you can't leave work on the field, you can't enjoy your life, and all you can think about is, 'How am I going to get it right?'" Ankiel says.

When he finally returned to the mound in '04, his performance in the minors brought to mind his rookie days before the playoff fiasco. In 232/3 innings, he had a 0.76 ERA and was among the Cardinals' September call-ups. His big moment came in St. Louis on Oct. 1 against Milwaukee when he pitched four relief innings, earning his first win since April 2001.

"A lot of it was mental, getting over those demons," Ankiel says. "I don't think people realize that I got it right. And at the scene of the crime."

Looking to keep the momentum going, Ankiel pitched in the Puerto Rican winter league. But when he arrived in camp the following spring, it took only a few bullpen sessions to deflate his hopes again. A nerve in his left elbow became inflamed.

By then, Rick Ankiel decided he'd had enough.

"There's no doubt I love the game," he says. "My love for it was always there. But you start to ask yourself, 'How long am I going to let my best years pass me by?'"

So during spring training on March 9, 2005, Ankiel declared that he was retiring — from pitching.

Although he hadn't played outfield since high school, he was going to try to make the switch. No one in the history of the majors, not even Babe Ruth, had been solely a pitcher for so long before attempting to become an every-day player.

As he struggled to save his career, speculation continued about why Ankiel lost his ability to pitch. Naturally, story after story focused on Richard Ankiel — recounting his criminal background and embellishing his reputation as a hard-partying, hard-to-please father who mercilessly pushed his son, only to let him down through his own failures.

"People were looking for answers," says Ankiel's high school pitching coach and close friend, Tony Malizia. "If his dad was at every game, why didn't he have any trouble then? I would think that would be greater pressure. Mr. Ankiel knows baseball."

Richard understands why many blame him for his son's downfall and, he concedes, maybe he was the reason.

"We used to be inseparable," Richard says. "But the kid got his heart broke and how long does it take to heal a broken heart? He was embarrassed in front of the whole world, and I wasn't there to pick him up."

If Rick was suppressing bad feelings toward his father, his emotions erupted in August 2005, shortly after Richard was released from prison.

Recounting their "long talk," Richard chokes back tears.

"Dad, you left me. You weren't there when I needed you the most," Richard remembers his son saying.

"We were both crying through that talk. And it hurt. It hurt both of us. But I hope that in time ..." Richard pauses to collect himself. "Time heals all wounds. That's what they say, isn't it? I hope they're right."

Finding the catch of a lifetime

When a 561 area code appears on his cellphone, Richard Ankiel perks up, answering with a singsong, "Hell-oooo!"

"Oh, man, I thought you were Rick. He's supposed to call me about going fishing tomorrow."

The redfish are biting these days, Richard says. Rick, when he's in Jupiter for spring training, calls his father for the fishing report. Rick has a boat and they prefer to fish just off Jupiter Beach, close to where they used to fish together when he was a boy.

But they don't talk baseball anymore. Their language has changed.

"That's the one thing he'll ask me about: 'What's biting at home?'" Richard Ankiel says.

The sea seems to have a calming effect on the younger Ankiel. When he learned he would miss the entire 2006 season with a knee injury, it was the prospect of taking a woman fishing that brightened his mood.

Lory Bailey, a former Dolphins cheerleader he had met through a mutual friend years ago, said she knew something about fishing. Probably could teach Ankiel a thing or two, she bragged. So Ankiel took her on the ocean in search of bonito.

"She was talking a big game so I had to see if she could back it up," Ankiel says. "Some people don't deal well with the ocean. They have landlubber feet. But I put her to the test real quick — and she passed."

Ankiel spent all year with Lory as he rehabbed his knee. She proved inspirational, counseling him to forget his setbacks and look to the future. She also encouraged him to repair the relationship with his father.

Ankiel, still wounded from the public fallout from his pitching woes and his father's prison term, has become fiercely private and refused to allow Lory or his mother, Denise Turton, who is divorced from Richard, to comment for this story.

He's now pursuing a storybook ending. Last year began with a wedding on the beach and a sky aglow with fireworks, and continued with Ankiel lighting up the minors at his new position, hitting 32 homers, driving in 89 runs and setting several batting records for the Class AAA Memphis Redbirds.

Long road back leads to joy and pain

On Aug. 9, Ankiel was called up to start in right field against San Diego. He walked into the Cardinals' clubhouse to a standing ovation.

"I've never seen a response like that from an entire clubhouse for one guy," La Russa says.

The crowd also gave Ankiel a standing ovation in his first at-bat, and when he hit a three-run homer in his fourth trip to the plate, Busch Stadium exploded with flashbulbs and fans demanded a curtain call.

"It raised the hair on the back of my neck," Matheny says.

Ankiel went on a tear reminiscent of his days in Port St. Lucie. In his first 23 games back, he hit .356 with nine homers, propelling the struggling defending World Series champions into the pennant race. Then, another crash landing.

On Sept. 7, one day after hitting two homers and driving in seven runs against Pittsburgh, the New York Daily News reported that in 2004 Ankiel had received a year's supply of human growth hormone from the Total Health & Rejuvenation Center in Palm Beach Gardens.

Ankiel faced reporters in the Cardinals' dugout before that night's game at Arizona, insisting that any medication he received and used during his career came under a doctor's care. The Daily News also wrote that Ankiel stopped receiving the drug when baseball banned HGH in 2005.

No matter. Public perception among fans weary of performance-enhancing drug scandals quickly soured Ankiel's feel-good story. The Cardinals, one game out of first place when the HGH story broke, lost 12 straight to fall out of contention, with Ankiel in a 6-for-43 slump in that span.

Ankiel said the HGH report shook him, but Lory was his rock again and Ankiel felt better after St. Louis won its last five games and he finished with 11 homers and 39 RBI in 53 games.

"Oh-seven was the best year of my life," Ankiel says. "A big part of it was having your best friend there, sharing everything you go through, someone to share your life with."

Asked about the HGH now, Ankiel turns on the topic like a hanging curveball.

"I've been cleared of any wrongdoing and that's where it's at," he says, preferring again not to look back.

Life is about recreating yourself. Perhaps such introspect is why Rick Ankiel is fishing again with his father, seeing him for the man he has become.

Richard Ankiel is back to installing drywall, and he's fishing on a competitive circuit on the Treasure Coast. He's even found an outlet for a passion he no longer shares with his son, coaching youth league baseball in Fort Pierce.

"Maybe I have enough baseball left in me to help some other kid do what Richard did," the elder Ankiel says. "I was a hard guy growing up. It's taken me a long time to realize all the mistakes I'd made.

"Richard is strong, but he has compassion. Maybe that was my problem ... I didn't show enough compassion."

Rick has goals beyond the baseball field this year, and that's another new approach for him. He and Lory are trying to start a family.

"I hope I have a boy," he says, smiling while sitting at a picnic table one morning outside the Cardinals' spring training clubhouse.

A father-son relationship of his own? What will he do that his father didn't do? What won't he do?

"Those are all good questions. But the fact is, I don't know what I'll do. I think I'll play it by ear," Rick says.

He sits silent for a moment, thoughtful.

"Times are changing a lot and you have to take that into consideration when you're raising your children," he finally says. "You talk to people who have kids and they say it changes your view of the world."

Carlos Frias writes for The Palm Beach Posst.