“I just felt like nobody in the world was giving me a chance, and that helped fuel me, too. … I was excited to go back to the park and excited to be there, where the four years before that, it was a grind,” Ankiel told NPR in 2017 of his conversion to the outfield. “And I wasn’t excited to go to the field. And baseball became fun again. And that challenge of making it back became, you know, just this excited to be there, and it was awesome. I made it back. And, you know, now here I am.”