Excerpted from “The Phenomenon: Pressure, the Yips, and the Pitch that Changed My Life” by Rick Ankiel and Tim Brown. Copyright © 2017. Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

I made six major-league starts that 2001 season. One of them, the first, went pretty well, because I was drunk.

On a Sunday afternoon in Arizona against the Diamondbacks, I’d make my first real appearance since the previous fall. I’d had six months to prepare. Physically. Emotionally. I had sports psychologist Dr. Harvey Dorfman on my side. I had my self-help books. I had all my little brain exercises, my breathing exercises, down. All that had to follow was for me to walk to the mound in a big, full ballpark, stand in front of those people and the television cameras and my teammates, bury the past, throw strikes, and start winning my career back. My life back.

I knew it wasn’t going to work. For days leading to that start, I knew. The nightmares came every night. I stared at the television in a hotel room in Phoenix early Sunday morning, hours before a bus would take me to defeat. All that walking around with a smile on my face for the past seven weeks, throwing decently and hanging on that, throwing poorly and dismissing that, promising better, would be exposed that afternoon at Bank One Ballpark against a team that, in seven months, would beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. We’d fly to St. Louis after the game. I packed my suitcase, stuffed my books into a carry-on bag, and rolled it all to the curb in front of the hotel. The mood was light. After three losses to start the season, we’d won two in Arizona. Now we’d have to get past Randy Johnson, who’d won the second of what would be four consecutive Cy Young Awards the season before. He was the best pitcher in the game. Tall and left-handed, he’d overcome early career wildness to become this beast of a pitcher. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was a beast of a pitcher trying to overcome early career wildness myself, except Randy probably drove to the ballpark that morning confident about his chances and singing along to the radio. All I felt was dread. I felt the Thing.

The ballpark is enormous. What started as just a roof in the distance in a few minutes filled the bus window.

“One hundred,” I said to myself. “Breathe.”

“Ninety-nine. … Ninety-eight. … Ninety-seven.”

“Breathe.”

Inside, I tried to lose myself in the routine of game day. The scouting reports. The conversations with pitching coach Dave Duncan and catcher Mike Matheny. The music inside the headphones. The nap that wouldn’t come. Early games from the East Coast on TV. The clock on the wall was relentless, bearing toward game time.

In the hour before I’d have to go out and prove to everyone that I was exactly the same pitcher who’d unraveled on those mounds in October, I grew desperate. Weeks before, over a beer with a buddy, he’d said, “Why not drink before you pitch?” I’d laughed, then admitted I was sometimes better against the wall with a beer in my hand. The alcohol, I don’t know, maybe it quieted my head. Maybe I didn’t care quite so much. I hadn’t thought about it since. I’d not started a big-league game yet either. I had to fight.

And if I couldn’t bury the monster, I would drown it.

“Hey,” I said to Darryl Kile, “think you could get me a bottle of vodka?”

It was humiliating.

He returned with a full bottle. Something cheap. No judgment. I shrugged.

“Do what you gotta do, kid,” he said. “I understand.”

With everyone on the field stretching, and so in a clubhouse empty but for me and a couple very curious clubbies, I took a few long pulls, felt the warmth and reassurance as the alcohol seeped into my bloodstream, and poured the rest into a water bottle, which I carried with my glove and cap to the dugout. It wasn’t about gaining an edge but softening the edge. I couldn’t trust me. Nobody could. But I could trust a water bottle filled with vodka beside me on the bench. I could trust a good, hard buzz.

The Diamondbacks scored two runs in the first, both on a Matt Williams home run, but I didn’t walk anyone. By the third inning, we were ahead, 4–2.

The ball was jumping out of my hand. I came off the mound exhilarated. I’d struck out Tony Womack and Reggie Sanders to end the second inning and Luis Gonzalez to start the third, then gotten mishit groundouts out of Matt Williams and Greg Colbrunn. Right through the heart of their order.

Story continues