Wild Card

After Rick Ankiel’s horrendously wild postseason, the St. Louis Cardinals didn’t send their prize rookie to the showers, minors or bullpen.

They sent him to the couch.

With the Cardinals’ approval, Ankiel was treated by baseball psychologist Harvey Dorfman, who worked with the Oakland Athletics during their glory days.

Ankiel, who threw nine wild pitches in four postseason innings last season, doesn’t like to talk about the help he received. He just wants spring training to start.

“I’m fine, myself,” he said.

“It’s something that happened and it’s something you want to forget about. I pushed it away and let’s start with the season.”

The 21-year-old phemon isn’t alone with his on-field metal blocks.

Over the years, plenty of professional athletes have come unhinged: second basemen Steve Sax and Chuck Knoblauch suddenly, inexplicably, couldn’t make the 30-foot toss to first; catcher Mackey Sasser triple-pumped on throws back to the mound but could throw a laser to catch runners trying to steal second; Steve Blass, Mitch Williams (the original “Wild Thing”) and Mark Wohlers all lost the strike zone.

Ankiel’s agent, Scott Boras, says just about every major leaguer could do with some kind of help from a psychologist.

“I haven’t had a client that hasn’t utilized it,” he said. “I’ve had clients go through this before and at the end they come out better.”

Added manager Tony La Russa: “Counseling is a professional way to do things.”

Ankiel had his share of bounced curveballs in the regular season, too, throwing 12 wild pitches. But that was in 175 innings.

Nobody had done what Ankiel did in 110 years, throw five wild ones in a single inning, in Game 1 of the Cardinals’ first-round playoff sweep of the Atlanta Braves.

In the next outing they were confident Ankiel would rediscover that the catcher’s mitt was his target. The evidence was his ever-cocky attitude.

“At least I set a record,” he said.

The next time out, five of his first 20 pitches sailed to the backstop. Given one last chance to clean the slate, he threw two wild pitches in a brief relief outing in the NLCS, and almost nailed the Mets’ mascot during warmups.

He seems almost desperate for the bad times to fade from memory, and for people to focus on his prodigal brilliance. This, he insists, is not him.

Last year, he was 11-7, struck out more than a batter per inning with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of about 2-to-1, and had a staff-best 3.50 ERA. La Russa chose him to start Game 1 of the playoffs, and not 20-game winner Darryl Kile.

Because of all the attention, Ankiel is anxious for the season to start and for the media to cover something else.

“I hope you guys will stop talking about it,” he said. “Everybody has a bad day and you put those behind you and move on.”

For La Russa, the sooner Ankiel’s wildness becomes less of a topic, the better. He compared Ankiel to Sandy Koufax, who also was a wild child before becoming perhaps the most dominating left-hander ever.

The challenge: In Koufax’s day, there was no all-sports radio, no dot.com reporting, no tabloid mentality. Pitching today with all the extra attention, La Russa wonders whether Koufax would have developed into a great pitcher.

So the manager will try to make sure Ankiel doesn’t have to revisit his problems every day.

“Everybody that comes into town is going to want to touch up Rick and every time the news is slow, somebody is going to say, ‘Let me jump on that one again,”’ La Russa said. “It’s going to be brutal, in my opinion, so that’s where we’re going to be equally brutal when somebody starts messing with him.”

Boras, who has known Ankiel for several years, believes his client will be just fine. Ankiel has spent most of the winter in California, working out with Cardinals pitcher Matt Morris.

“Rick knows this is something people are going to talk about and that he’s going to have to deal with,” the agent said. “I think he’s learned some things about himself.”

Catcher Mike Matheny missed the postseason after slicing his right ring finger with a hunting knife that was given to him as a birthday present. He caught Ankiel most of the season and wonders if he could have made a difference, maybe by settling him down.

“All I know is when I saw it all happening, I just wanted the opportunity,” Matheny said. “I felt like I had my hands tied. It was probably the hardest time I had in the playoffs.”

Matheny is confident Ankiel will shake off this problem just as he shakes off a sign.

“Things have come easy for him in this game, really,” Matheny said. “He’s showed stardom in a hurry and you’d never know that something like that could make him a better pitcher, take him to another level.”

Center fielder Jim Edmonds said spring training will give the young pitcher a chance for a new start.

“He’s not going to have to prove he can make the rotation, he’s just going to have to pitch,” Edmonds said. “I think he’s learned his lesson.”

For his part, Ankiel doesn’t think anyone should worry.

“I’ve gone and done what I can,” he said, “and I feel good. Hopefully, this year will be better.”