JUPITER, Fla. • In the grip of the yips, former Cardinals phenom Rick Ankiel was surrounded at any given time by people with suggestions, coaches with pointers, teammates with support and reporters with questions. And yet all he felt was a vacuum.
He used the word “alone.”
“When I’m going through it I didn’t have the answer either,” Ankiel said. “You see guys who have an elbow injury and they can go talk to somebody else who’s had an elbow injury. … When you go through the yips, first of all, nobody wants to talk about it.