“What it took me to throw strikes, mentally, from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep — the mental exercises, everything that came with me trying to be successful,” Ankiel added. “I just tried to look into the future another five years, six, seven years. Whatever was going to come of this isn’t going to be worth it. My personality was changing. My relationships with friends and my family were changing. And I knew something had to change.”