This is a undaunted life a man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.

Alright guys today we've got another interview for you. This is with Rick Ankeel.

So that is a former professional baseball player that actually played with six different franchises between 1999 and 2013

But most notably was his time with the St. Louis Cardinals. So yes, I'm a Cardinals fan, but guys, this story goes beyond any particular team,

any team that you're a fan or not a fan of.

Because the thing about this guy just remind you of what he went through.

He was a pitcher from 1999 to 2001. He was seen as a phenom. He was the next great left-handed pitcher.

He was compared to Sandy Kofax. He was on one of the classic franchises, one of the six classic franchises in Major League Baseball, but

everything changed in the 2000 season. Okay, so in the 2000 season he had a great

regular season at the age of 20 he went 11 and 7 with an ERA that was 3.5 which was top 10 in the

National League that year but he very famously lost his ability to throw strikes.

Okay so if you can remember back the first game of the National League Division series in 2000,

it was game one at home for the Cardinals versus the Braves.

And so the Braves were the team that he loved growing up because he grew up in that area. He watched him. Greg Maddox was his favorite pitcher. Well, Greg Maddox was the opposing pitcher, but Greg Maddox gives up six runs early in that game, very uncharacteristically. So you're thinking this kid is just going to have a nice game

he's going to get his first you know playoff win under his belt and it just didn't

quite work out that way in the third inning alone he throws five wild

pitches there were certainly more pitches that could have gone wild, but there are five wild pitches and four walks before he was mercilessly pulled from the game by Tony Larusa. In his next game back, that was in the NL Championship series game two against

the Mets he threw 20 pitches five of them went past the catcher then he

pitched again in NLCS game five he faced four hitters walked two of them, two wild pitches. The

Cardinals were eliminated in the CS that year, but it just started this downward

spiral for him in his career. He was sent down to AAA to try and regain his command and the problems only got worse. He eventually was sent down all the way to rookie ball, right? I mean there's a lot of levels of the minor leagues. He went all the way down to the very very bottom which is rookie ball.

He dealt with injuries, he had Tommy John surgery, but it was a several years process.

...