No,
that’s not a band…although, it’s a pretty awesome name for one! I CALL DRUMS!!
Anyway,
to the task at hand: Blue Jays’ fans sixth-favourite* left-handed pitcher –
Ricky Romero. We've all had a front-row seat to watch the fall and rise and fall of Ricky Romero,
from first round draft pick, to near-bust, to All-Star on the cusp of ace-dom,
all the way back down to (barely) a AAA pitcher.
Personally,
it’s been difficult to watch. Romero was a lefty bulldog, taking the ball every
fifth day without fail. Even when he was struggling, he never made excuses. Despite
reported arm and knee issues, which were/are so bad that John Lott from the
National Post reported recently that Romero had stem cells inserted into his knee to help alleviate the pain. Romero simply went to the mount and pitched – poorly at times – every fifth day
and was always accountable, which is refreshing from a professional athlete.
From all accounts, the root cause of Romero’s problems are all mental – a kind of/sort of mild case of The Yips (see also: Sax, Steve; Knoblauch, Chuck; and Ankiel, Rick for more dramatic examples of The Yips). For the uninitiated, TheYips is baseball nomenclature for rare situations where players simply lose the ability to perform seemingly mundane, “Baseball 101”-type tasks – like throwing a ball from second base to first, or from the mound to home. It’s not easy to watch players suffer through The Yips. Case in point: Rick Ankiel, a 20-year-old lefty phenom who, in part, led the St. Louis Cardinals to the 2000 NLDS. In his first career post season start, he literally and figuratively fell apart. He threw six wild pitches in the third inning alone and had five walks overall. Incredibly, the Cardinals won the game, despite Ankiel’s struggles. He made a couple of subsequent appearances, but for all intents and purposes. Ankiel was done as a Major League pitcher.**
