The Kid Comes Back

Jonah Keri compares Rick Ankiel, the can't-miss pitching prospect turned Steve Blass disease victim turned - for a few games, at least - slugging right fielder, to Roy Hobbs in The Natural. But Hobbs was an old man by the time he re-appeared in the Show, whereas it's only taken Ankiel a few years to go from pitching trainwreck to starting right-fielder. So the real parallel has to be to Roy Tucker, the Kid from Tomkinsville, and the hero of the greatest boys' baseball books ever written.

I don't know a surer sign of American decline that the fact that in this summer of sporting discontent, Roy Tucker's creator, John R. Tunis, is being considered for deletion by Wikipedia.

Comments

John R. Tunis--now there's a good memory. His books and the Bronc Burnett series of Wilfred McCormick filled a lot of Ohio nights for me as a kid.

Posted by Steven Donegal | August 13, 2007 6:50 PM

Well, Ross, you're right that it was a mere 2 years ago that he chose to become an outfielder. But it has been seven years since he was an effective player. He was only around 20 back in 2000 when this unraveling started to happen against the Braves in the LDS.

I remember watching a game of his that summer on ESPN. He had one of the best curveballs I've ever seen. After pitching lights out for 5 or so innings, he started to get into all kinds of trouble, and LaRussa left him out there too long. I'll always wonder if he was mishandled. Though in fairness to LaRussa, how can you ever predict Steve Blass Disease?

Ankiel only hit around .270 in Triple A. I can't see him being a useful major leaguer-- he will K a ton, and hit around .230.

I sure hope to be wrong about it, though.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | August 13, 2007 7:13 PM

What's with Wikipedia feeling like they need to delete perfectly valid entries? They already deleted Megan McArdle's entry a while back. Are they out of space or something? I'm a huge Wikipedia fan, but this is pissing me off.

Posted by ed | August 13, 2007 9:45 PM

The notability tag has been removed from the wiki article--references have been added. The original version (see here) was indeed quite low quality and didn't really claim any notability, as compared to the current version.

Posted by Dan Miller | August 14, 2007 10:28 AM

Ankiel only hit around .270 in Triple A. I can't see him being a useful major leaguer-- he will K a ton, and hit around .230

I think this is right as a projection of 2007 Ankiel, but I'm more hopeful for 2009 and beyond Ankiel. I think that a traditional aging pattern, where hitters peak at 27 or so, is not the best projection for Ankiel, who has only been a professional hitter for a couple years. His weaknesses as a hitter seem to have very little to do with athleticism, and a lot to do with lacking polish in pitch recognition and in tailoring his swing to the pitch and situation.

Most 27-year-olds who already have big time home run power have little room for further projection. Ankiel has a ton, and I would not be surprised at all to see him in an all-star game in 4-5 years.

Posted by DivGuy | August 14, 2007 5:34 PM

Can't say I care for most of your political views, but I'm certainly with you on this--John R. Tunis seems a perfectly legitimate entry for Wikipedia, better than many others, and I'm glad to see from Dan Miller's post that this has been corrected.

Posted by dogofthesouth | August 14, 2007 10:14 PM

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