When talent vanishes overnight

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Every player has the chance to make that one mistake that's gonna make fans blame him for a generation. It's the kind of pressure that throws some of the best players in baseball into prolonged slumps as if they suddenly just forgot how to play. And it's been making me think about one of our favorite episodes. An episode about baseball, about high stakes performance, and what makes some people choke. Think about something you love to do. The thing you're best at. The thing you've practiced more than anything else in the world. Maybe it's painting or writing or playing the piano. Now imagine you wake up one day and you just can't do it anymore. Everything else is fine. You're not sick, you're not injured, but that one thing is impossible. You can barely even hold the paintbrush and you have no idea why. It's happened to some of the greatest performers in the world. To gymnasts like Simone Biles. It looked like she got almost lost in the air. Or World Champion Darts player Eric Bristow. The game I love to play. It used to be so easy to do. All of a sudden, I can't even throw it up. There was Leon Fleischer, who suddenly stopped being able to play the piano. I was in a state of deep funk, deep depression. There was talk show host Diane Reem. I couldn't go on the air. I'd go. And this kind of thing can last for years. Like it did with a pro baseball player I spoke to named Rick Ankeel. I didn't understand the magnitude of what was really happening and what would happen to my career after that. This phenomenon has a lot of names. Whiskey fingers, the monster, the waggles, dartitis, musicians cramp. And maybe most often the yips. I'm no I'm hasn't felt and this week on unexplainable. What could cause people at the absolute peak of their profession to suddenly and often permanently lose their superpowers? The things they can do better than anything else. The things that in a lot of ways make them who they are. It's one of the loneliest places you ever want to be. And once you're there, is there anything you can do to make it back? Before he ever got the Yips, Rick Ankeel was a phenom. You know, I ended up being the number one prospect in the country at the time in high school. I threw nine no hitters through three my sophomore three my junior three my senior year. And when he was just 20, he made it to the majors, the youngest player in the league. You're watching all your dreams unfold right in front of you. He wasn't just young. He was dominant. So at the end of his first full season, his manager tapped him to start the biggest game of his life. A huge crowd gathering today as this much anticipated division series featuring the Braves, the champions of the National League, the Cardinals, the champions of the central. It was the first game of the playoffs over 50,000 fans watching to see if Rick was up for it. And on the mound with the Cardinals, the young lefty Rick Ankeel first game starter in the post season. All eyes are on you. So your walk from the bullpen when you warm up as the pitcher is like your boxers entrance as the motionless as possible. Body language looking like I want to knock these guys out. Rick came out throwing crisp and easy. Didn't give up a run in the first two innings. But then in the top of the third, I threw a pitch through a fastball and I overthrew it. Cut it pretty good. So, you know, it dark. The dirt back to the screen. Over the second base goes red. I'm just standing there looking at it and I remember telling myself, man, just threw a wild pitch. Everything seemed normal. The announcers weren't particularly phase. Wild pitches happen all the time in baseball. But Rick thought something felt off. It just struck me weird. And all of a sudden it felt like, I don't know, something I never felt before. I didn't really understand what was happening. For the first time, Rick started hesitating. I'm going through the routines and different things to get yourself back on track as a pitcher and nothing was working. Pitch goes, comes out, talks to me, we slow it down. And then it just started to unravel. My muscles and fingers in my arm were, you know, locking up and the ball is just coming out of my hand like a shot put. Like I didn't even know how to hold a ball. The quietness of the crowd is kind of eerie right now. It was like I blacked out. And then it was like, okay, God, where did the ball go? It was like, like everything I had ever done in the past from a pitching standpoint was gone. And I had no idea how to throw baseball. 35 pitches, tortured pitches in the inning for the 21 year old and Keele is almost like my body was trying to protect me from from death in a way. And I want to know why. So when you think of someone like this baseball player, I talked to Rick and Keele, who suddenly starts blacking out whenever he releases the ball. Is this just like choking under pressure? Is it something different? So choking has been defined as a failure to perform under pressure. But you may well still be in control. However, I think when we've spoken to athletes who have experienced it, they talk about that just loss of control that is almost just a different level. It's a different experience from performing under pressure and not doing well. This is Sally Akerst. She's a sports psychologist in London and she's done tons of research on the Yps. Sometimes we hear from athletes, their performance is automatic. They can't even tell you what their performance was like. Like it's so unconscious that they're just doing it. And to get that level of automaticity, I believe that an athlete truly trusts themselves that they can perform at that level. And I guess if someone stops trusting themselves, they might stop being so automatic. Yeah. And I guess when I was teaching students around this, I always get them to think about, you know, when you're driving the car and it's so automatic after you've driven for a few years, isn't it? You can be singing along and doing other things when you're driving. But maybe the police come up behind you and suddenly you become very conscious of how you're driving. And it gets all a little bit less automatic and it's then just a bit more jerky. It's not as smooth. It's not as efficient in the way you're performing and processing. To do anything at this high of a level, you have to be automatic. You can't consciously think about every small motion you're doing, especially when you're doing something as complicated as pitching. And once you lose that feeling of being automatic, that ability to do something unconsciously, it isn't easy to get it back. It's like waking up in the middle of the night and trying to will yourself back to sleep. The more you think about it, the harder it gets. But that's exactly how Rick tried to attack this problem. And the next game, he was even worse. Right back where he left off. First pitch head high to Perez. It got so bad, the announcer started making fun of him. He's got guys in the third road, ducking. Bobby, all right down there, you ducking. You feel like you're safe behind that screen. That's Hall of Fame broadcaster Joe Buck right there, making fun of a 21 year old whose life is falling apart in front of 50,000 people. He's lost all his mechanics and he can't get the ball to the point where the catcher can even catch it. He's throwing like the mechanic right now. This time, Rick's outing ended much quicker. His coach took him out before the first inning was even over. Well, that's the end of the night for Rick Ankeel. And pretty soon, the Cardinals season was over. The mix are going to the World Series. But in the offseason, Rick got right back up. He wasn't going to let two rough games ruin his career. He had a plan. The only thing I knew was to work harder, throw more, try to figure this out. Rick went back to basics. I'm trying so many different things. He broke down his throwing mechanics step by step. I'm thinking about keeping my weight back and the ball's coming out perfect. Went out the next day. Same thought. I can't throw it anywhere close. But he didn't get discouraged. He just kept trying something different. I'm driving down the street. I see kids playing catch like, let me try that mechanics. It works for him. And I'd go find a field and throw another hundred balls. But that didn't stick either. Same thing. Can't throw it anywhere close. He tried anything he could think of to get back to that feeling of being automatic. There was times I would just sing songs, right? Try to distract your brain from like taking over. But nothing was working. It was like my body was starting to tense up and locked out. At this point, Rick wasn't throwing in front of 50,000 people anymore. He wasn't facing the kind of pressure he was dealing with on live TV, pitching in the playoffs. He was just out there with a couple of guys and he still couldn't throw straight. I'm just trying to play catch and I'm having trouble just throwing it to the guy that's 15 feet away from me. And that's when I'm like, you know, I don't know what is going on, but something's not right. The issue with it, right, is that it's not as if you have a shoulder injury where I can say, oh, look, I was hurt. That's what happened. You have something going on that only you can feel and nobody can see. He tried asking his teammates if they'd had experience with the Yips, but no one would even say the word. It was like they felt it was some kind of curse. You could speak into existence. People feel like it can be contagious, you know, nobody wants to talk about it. So people are nervous all the time. There's really quite a stigma around the Yips and almost a fear that if someone says, oh, maybe you've got the Yips, it's almost having this, oh, goodness. Sally says all that superstition can make players obsess even more. That initial experience and the reaction of others will be influencing potentially their dealing with it. And obviously that may well impact their being able to overcome it in future. That's kind of what happened with Rick. He started overanalyzing every tiny action in his life. It was like he was looking for something to be naturally automatic. Did he normally brush his hair with his left hand? Was that the way he always tied his shoes? He wasn't sure anymore. I'd have nightmares in the middle of the night that I couldn't throw strikes. I'd wake up my heartbeat going 100 miles an hour soaked in sweat. I wake up at three in the morning and I would just I would get out of bed and stay awake. It's just a dark, nasty. You can't get it to leave your mind. Eventually, Rick found a sports psychologist who helped him get past the worst of it. He helped Rick manage his frustration to not obsess over every single throw, to not blame himself for everything. And he got to the point where he could control it a bit sometimes. But it would always come rushing back. There was even a time where I could hear what it felt like was blood draining from my brain down past my ears into my neck. And I could feel that feeling coming and it's like, here we go. Rick kept struggling for years. He went down to the miners, worked his way back up. But eventually he decided he couldn't keep going. So in 2005, almost five years after that first playoff game, he walked into his coach's office and I shut the door and I just said, I can't do this anymore. It took almost everything I had to retire to quit whatever you want to call it, because I still felt like a failure. Rick's promising pitching career was over. The Yps had claimed another victim. But honestly, for the first time in years, he felt OK. He felt good about it. I just felt like this giant weight was taken off my shoulders. You know, felt like I could breathe. He drove home, laid down on the couch, got ready for retired life. And then. His phone rang. It was his agent. I was like, what in the fuck are you talking about? That's next. Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up and audit dread. It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place and cuts audit prep by 82 percent. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it. Com, clients. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to Vanta.com. Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up and audit dread. It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place and cuts audit prep by 82 percent. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it. Com, clients. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to Vanta.com. Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up and audit dread. It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place and cuts audit prep by 82 percent. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it. Com, clients. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to Vanta.com. What are the yips? Are you kidding me, you two? We don't say the Y word out loud, you understand? It just comes automatic. Don't think, just throw. Don't think, just throw. After years of struggling with the yips, Rick finally decided to just let it go. Move on from baseball, clear his mind. So I went home. I didn't even turn on the radio. I didn't turn TV on. I was just sitting on the couch in pure silence. And I was like the first time I'd felt inner peace in a long time. Until my agent calls, hey, are you okay? Yeah, man, I'm good. I'm great. Whatever. And he goes, hey, what do you, we think about being an outfielder. I was like, what in the fuck are you talking about? Going from pitching to playing outfield in the majors might not sound like the hardest thing, but only a tiny handful of players have ever been able to do both at the highest level. So Rick basically laughed at his agent. He's like, no, I'm being serious. So I hang up. I walked around. I found a bat in my room and I came back out to the living room and I started swinging it. And I had this, just this feeling took over my whole body. It was an outer body experience, so to speak, but I could see it. I could feel it. I almost felt like I could taste it. I felt like the heavens came down and spoke to me like, um, it was like listening to the best version of amazing grace ever. Rick dropped the bat, picked up the phone and called the general manager of the Cardinals, who told him, be here tomorrow morning. You're an outfielder. So yes, sir. I'll see you tomorrow morning. Click. It was absurd. But the thing is that I believed it. Rick started at the bottom of the minors and he hit pretty well, played the field pretty well too. He slowly worked his way up. And finally, after two and a half years, he was back. When I walked into that clubhouse, the hugs, the high fives, you know, everybody in that organization knew what I went through and what it took to get back. And the love that I felt in the clubhouse was surreal. It wasn't a particularly important game. It was mid-August, dog days of summer for a Cardinals team that had more losses than wins. But the stadium was packed. And as Rick walked out for his first at bat as a major league outfielder, right fielder, Rick Pankiel, he got a standing ovation. Rick was amped. He knew just how big this moment was. What is going through his mind right now? His heart has got to just be racing. He blocked out all the noise and swung. First at bat, he pops it up to short, handled by Blum for the first out. Then his second time up. A high strike, looked to be a ball, and Ankeel strikes out, and he's over two. But then his third time up. Fans are ready to erupt with a base hit, a home run, something positive for Rick Ankeel. He took a huge swing. Two-two, and Ankeel strikes out, over three. Finally, in the bottom of the seventh, Rick came up with runners on first and second. And this time... Ankeel out to deep right field. I'm running the first. I'm looking at the outfielder. I'm looking at the ball. I'm looking at the wall, trying to judge if it's going to be enough. There's a chance to leave the ballpark. It's gone! A three-run shot for Rick Ankeel back in the major leagues. Remarkable. I could feel the ground shaking from the people in St. Louis. The fans going crazy. The explosion of emotions. I don't even... I felt like I floated around the bases on a magic carpet. And these fans are pretty happy along with him. After so many baseball players before him had been beaten by the Yips, Rick had made it back. But he didn't get there by just working harder and harder, trying to beat the Yips into submission. He found a way around them. I knew if I didn't give this a shot that I was going to wake up days and be like, why didn't I try that? Why didn't I try to make it back? I already felt like a failure as it was, and this was a way for redemption. He stopped trying to figure out an explanation for the Yips, and he just accepted what he didn't understand. Up to that point, I wanted to know why. Not everything. Doesn't matter. Why that happened? Why that happened? I had to adapt to the fact that sometimes we don't always get to know why. There's not always a why. I think that's a powerful lesson too. But as the year went on, something strange started happening. His arm came back to him. His arm was strong. It was accurate. It was feared. He was that same 20-year-old phenom again, not thinking anymore, just throwing. All of a sudden, it seemed like his Yips were gone. But the surprising part is that I couldn't do it from 60 feet, and then I could go out there and probably throw more strikes from 180 feet away than I would be on the mound. One kind of throw, pitching from 60 feet, Rick couldn't do it. Another kind of throw from way farther away, back to automatic, which is a sign that maybe his Yips want actually a psychological thing. They might have been caused by something else entirely. The idea that you can't throw 60 feet, but you can throw 300, that's perfectly reasonable to be physiological. Okay, not psychological, because they're totally different motor activities. This is neurologist Steve Frucht, and he told me scientists used to assume that the Yips were psychological. But in the last few decades, there's been new research showing that for a small number of patients, there's a physical cause, like this one study on golfers. You can put sensors on their wrists, on their fingers, on their hands, and you can actually show millisecond by millisecond that right before the club had pits, certain muscles over-activate. You can actually show that physiologically. A lot of these golfers twitched the same exact way, with the same muscles, which suggested they had an actual disorder in their nervous system, a disorder called focal dystonia. Dystonia is a very unusual disorder in which involuntary movements are triggered by a very specific task. In this case, just by this athletic performance, that's not just a performance anxiety. That's an actual movement disorder. Movement disorders are neurological conditions that lead to involuntary movements. So things like Parkinson's disease, Tourette's syndrome, essential tremor, and just like a lot of movement disorders, scientists still don't know exactly what causes focal dystonia, but they do know a couple basic things about the symptoms. One, these twitches happen in only one specific part of the body, and two, they only happen during a specific action. For example, things like Rhytis Cramp, which is a task-specific dystonia, everything about the hand's okay, but when they pick up a pen, the task of writing induces the dystonia. And for musicians, it's not uncommon for somebody to develop dystonia just on one instrument. So they can't play flute, but saxophone and clarinet just fine. I asked Steve why this kind of thing couldn't just be psychological, and he told me you can actually see signs of dystonia with a functional MRI. These are disorders of the way the brain activates, particularly the motor and sensory networks within the brain. And because this is a physical thing, people with dystonia tend to yip in the same way whether they're under pressure or not, which might explain why Rick had trouble just playing catch, even when no one was watching. Now, how could that be psychological? No, come on. This is a physiologic disorder. A diagnosis like this can be hard for patients to accept. Steve says that people he works with can find it hard to believe they could have some kind of involuntary twitch they don't even feel themselves doing. So they're often convinced that the whole thing is just in their head. So what do they do? They work harder and harder. The musician locks the practice room door and says, I'm not coming out of here until I fix this. And usually that's exactly the wrong thing. It just accelerates the development of the problem. Practice on its own isn't going to make dystonia go away. It might actually make it worse. Medicine or even Botox injections can help stop twitches in some cases. But even when these treatments do work, they just blunt the effects of dystonia. They don't fix the underlying issue in the brain. Neurology has lots of therapeutics, but it doesn't have a lot of cures. It's just tumbling how little we know about this. Really, I think 50 years from now, people will look back derisively like, I can't believe they thought that. I can't believe they were treating it this way. Didn't they know this? They're probably going to think that of people who are seeing these patients today. To actually cure someone with dystonia, this would probably need to know what causes it in the first place. And right now, they just don't. But when Steve looks at what scientists still don't know about dystonia, he thinks it's an opportunity to learn something even bigger, something that goes beyond the yips. Just think about what connects tasks like writing, throwing, or even playing music. They're all tasks that require teaching, and it's not something that happens overnight. It requires multiple repetitions probably over many months to years. These are all things we need to learn. And how we learn them, or even how we learn anything really, is still pretty mysterious. But Steve thinks that by looking into this one failure in the system, the moment when someone stops being able to do something they've practiced their entire life, scientists can get a better understanding of how that learning system works in the first place. There isn't another disorder that I know of that gives you a window into talent and cognition and motor learning the way task-specific dystonia can do so well. Dystonia is just one potential cause of the yips. We still don't know whether it was at the root of problems for Rick or with so many other people who've dealt with these issues. But it might be able to help scientists get answers to questions that used to seem unanswerable. How come one person will practice the 10,000 hours and only get so far and another laps them by three years in? Well, what is that quote talent? We take it for granted that, of course, in sports there are those that are more talented than others. But where is that in the brain? And what made that so? Was it inherited? Was it chance? They're profound questions. Maybe the most surprising thing the yips reveal isn't that people can suddenly stop being able to do the thing they're best at. Maybe it's that they were ever able to do it at all. This episode was reported and produced by me, Noam Hasenfeld. We had editing from Jorge Just and Brian Resnick with help from Bird Pinkerton. Mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala. Music from me. Fact-checking from Melissa Hirsch. Meredith Hoddinot manages our team. And Mandingwyn is turning inside out. If you want to hear more about Rick's story, check out his book. It's called The Phenomenon. Pressure, the Yips, and the Pitch That Changed My Life. Thanks to Charles Adler, Debbie Cruz, and Phil Clark for their help on this episode. And if you have thoughts about the show, send us an email. We're at unexplainable at vox.com, and we'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you can, leave us a review or a rating wherever you listen. It really helps us find new listeners. This podcast and all of Vox is free, in part because of gifts from our readers and listeners. You can go to vox.com slash give to give today. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we'll be back on Wednesday. Music This is advertiser content brought to you by Stonyfield Organic. Our cows, them going out to pasture, they love it. They're so excited to go out every day. They wait right at the door, and we milk them, and we just open up the laneway and let them just go right out to pasture. I'm Rhonda Miller-Goodrich, and I'm a dairy farmer in Cabot, Vermont. Our farm is Mollybrook Farm. 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