Earlier in the month, one of the most important home runs of the year was hit off the bat of one of baseball's National League outfielders. The count was 2-1 and there were two outs when he sent the breaking ball from the righty over the right field fence.
And no, I'm not referring to Barry Bonds' (fraudulent) conquest of the home run title.
I'm talking about Rick Ankiel's three-run shot in the bottom of the seventh against the Milwaukee Brewers in a relatively meaningless game. In all likelihood, many of you have never even heard of him.
Ankiel didn't break any home run records. He didn't take 10 minutes to round the bases (ahem, Bonds). And he didn't have to field questions after the game about whether or not his home run was a result of the use of steroids.
Instead, Ankiel quietly returned to the league August 9 after a two-and-a-half-year absence and drew the crowd of 42,828 to its feet after he trotted across home plate in the seventh inning.
Why was his home run more impressive than Bonds' 756th? Because Ankiel's hit capped one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.
The story starts in 1999 when the southpaw from Florida made his major league debut against the Montreal Expos. The 20-year-old recorded 11 wins in his first full season in 2000 and ranked in the top 10 among major league pitchers in ERA and strikeouts. His 9.98 strikeouts per nine innings put him second in the league behind then-Arizona ace Randy Johnson.
By the end of the 2000 season, Ankiel seemed destined for a spectacular career after he finished second to Rafael Furcal for NL Rookie of the Year honors.
The precocious pitcher's rise to stardom, however, was immediately put on hold when he suddenly and inexplicably lost control of his accuracy against the Atlanta Braves in game one of the Division Series.
Ankiel got through two scoreless innings before throwing five wild pitches, walking four batters and giving up two runs on just four hits. Cardinal manager Tony LaRussa pulled Ankiel before he had even completed the inning, hoping that the young pitcher just got the jitters in his first playoff start.
But the wild pitches kept coming. In Ankiel's next appearance in the National League Championship Series LaRussa was forced to pull him during the first inning after throwing just 20 pitches (five of which were wild).
And so Ankiel disappeared into obscurity in 2001 when control problems persisted. The Cardinals kept him within the organization, sending him to the Rookie League to work on his control and hopefully help him slowly find his once dominant self.But progress was slow, and Ankiel seemed to hold the title as baseballs most recent one-hit wonder.
But five years later Ankiel found himself back in the Cardinal line-up. As an outfielder.
The one-time pitching phenom was trying to make a career out of hitting and fielding rather than pitching. The probability of success seemed miniscule. Here was a player trying to break into the Major Leagues at a position others have been playing their entire lives.
And when he hit that home run in his first game back he knew he had succeeded in recreating himself as an MLB player. Tony LaRussa knew it and so did the more than 42,000 Cardinal fans that filled Busch Stadium. The only problem is that not many other fans across the country realized the magnitude of what Ankiel had done.
That's because Bonds was stealing the national spotlight, still busy rounding the bases and pointing to the sky after he hit his record-breaker from two days before.
And of course, historically speaking, Bonds' August 7 hit will forever be remembered as more important. But Ankiel will live on as a representation of the payoff of determination and the ability of one player to return to prominence after being left for dead.
And all of this overshadowing of one player's heroic feat simply serves to show that the national attention has been on the scandal, the cheating allegations or the dogfighting charges rather than the sport itself.
Ankiel's comeback as an outfielder is the epitome of an amazing sports story. It defies logic and warms the hearts of those who understand the strength and mettle that is required to do what he did.
Just ask LaRussa, who sat in the postgame press conference August 9, misty-eyed, saying that other than winning the World Series, "that's the happiest I've been in this uniform."
No, Ankiel won't be slowing down or sputtering out of control at the plate anytime soon. Two days after his 2007 debut he showed that his success at the plate is no fluke, going 3-4, hitting two home runs and recording 3 RBI against the Dodgers.
And no, he hasn't used steroids.
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