The Cardinals drafted Ankiel in the second round of the 1997 Amateur Draft. He had committed to play college baseball at Miami and his agent, Scott Boras, had told teams that he was going to need an enormous bonus if they wanted him to sign. Ankiel should have been a Top 10 pick. The Cardinals paid Ankiel 2.5 million dollars, a record bonus for a second round pick, and signed him just three days before he was supposed to take his first college class.
Ankiel cruised through the Minors. In 1998, he pitched for two different Cardinals A ball teams, won 12 games, and struck out 222 batters in 161 innings. The following season, pitching in Double and Triple A, Ankiel went 13-3 with 194 strikeouts in 137 innings. The Cardinals called him up.
Let's switch over to cards.
Ankiel had plenty of baseball cards during the first two years of his career, but probably not from the places you would expect. There were no Bowman cards, which was an oddity for a late 1990s prospect. In fact, his first Bowman card came out in 2000, after he had reached the Majors.
There were plenty of Minor League cards though.
There are several team and league issued cards out there. Nothing really expensive, but some of the cards take a little bit of patience to find. He has a card in the 1999 Texas League Top Prospects set, but there is not a single copy of this card on COMC and only one on Ebay. He also has team issued cards for Prince William, Peoria, Arkansas, and Memphis. I paid $3-$4 for this card a few years back.
Ankiel also had some mass produced Minor League cards.
I really like some of these Minor League cards. I am not sure where the Just card company came from, and I do not know where they went, but for a short time they made some nice cards. They probably completed over populated the autographs of several players, but it's nothing that Topps or Upper Deck wouldn't have done once they reached the Majors. Ankiel signed a ton of cards for these sets.
Upper Deck made Minor League cards in the late 1990s.
An answer to the Bowman sets.
Ankiel was featured prominently in these sets. In fact, as a Cardinals fan these were great sets. The team had several prospects in the set, including the two biggest names. Beyond Ankiel, the set also had cards and autographs of outfielder J.D. Drew. The Ankiel autographs in the Upper Deck sets were nice, but I liked the base cards too.
Shiny, modern, everything you'd expect from an Upper Deck set.
Ankiel had two important Major League issue cards during the 1999 season. The lesser of the two cards was in the Fleer Update set.
Nice action shot of Ankiel pitching. I like the high socks, Ankiel always wore these while he was a pitcher, and the Sunday hats from the 1990s. The Cardinals still wear these hats on occasion now, but they used to come out every Sunday home game. In fact, Ankiel only pitched one Sunday night game in 1999, so it's not hard to narrow this down to a late August start against the Braves. The Cardinals lost on a Chipper Jones home run in extra innings.
Last card.
The best Ankiel rookie card was his 1999 Upper Deck Ultimate Victory. The regular Victory set was an inexpensive retail product. The packs were around a dollar and you were guaranteed an insert card of either Ken Griffey or Mark McGwire. The Ultimate Victory set was a fancier version of the same set with a shorter checklist. Sort of like Topps and Topps Chrome.
Ankiel, Josh Beckett, Alfonso Soriano, Pat Burrell, and several other good players had rookie cards in this product. I do not remember the exact price where this Ankiel card topped out, but it was quite expensive at it's peak in 2000.
That's it for cards.
From here, it's really hard to summarize Ankiel's career after 1999 and do it justice. Instead, I leave you with him opening a pack of baseball cards
Ankiel has recently written a book detailing his career, or there are others who have tried to summarize. It definitely had it's own unique path.
I remember the Ankiel craze. I was working at a card shop at the time and that Ultimate Victory card was hot.
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