The Phenomenon: Pressure, the Yips, and the Pitch that Changed My Life

by Rick Ankiel

When he was born, the nurse bundled him in a blue blanket and set him in my arms, and he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He blinked up at me, his father, the man who would, I promised, be kind to him forever, and teach him to be kind to others, and love him and try never to disappoint him. I would not call him names. I would not abuse his mother. I would stand behind him when he needed a push, before him when he needed a shield, beside him when he did not.

See, there is the life you want. There is the life you get. There is what you do with that.

That was the life I had, the one I’d live through that special arm. Until it wasn’t. Mine is the story of what I did with that.

The fights of my childhood against a drunken, raging father had tracked me into manhood, and now the villain was within me, restless and relentless and just out of reach.

Sports drew me out of my own head, from my insecurities and fears, my suspicion that I was the person my dad must think I was, because otherwise why would he say that stuff to me? Why would he be so angry?

I must feel the pain in order to treat the pain, was that I’d require clarity to cope with whatever came next.