Ben Ancheff Pitches This One for Me
It’s early morning on the last day of May. I’m at a coffee shop, trying to write a book review. But before I do that, I have to check Facebook. Usually, these “stories” don’t interest me. But topic number three jumped out to me this morning: “St. Thomas University: School’s 300-Pound Pitcher Starts for Team in NAIA World Series.”
Ability aside, appearance may be the second most important element that people take into account when judging athletes, for good or for ill. Examples run the gamut across sports, but the first person that comes to mind, and probably fellow ‘80s babies, is Dennis Rodman.
Rodman won five NBA championships in his career and led the NBA in rebounds per game for seven straight seasons across three different teams (Pistons, Spurs, and Bulls; 1991–92 to 1997–98). Obviously, he had immense athletic ability. But if you asked someone in the ‘90s about Rodman (who wasn’t a Bulls fan), they might not remember these incredible feats. “Wasn’t he the guy who colored his hair?” “Wasn’t he the guy with all the piercings and tattoos?” “Wasn’t he on TV in a wedding dress?”
If you play professional sports in the United States, you are expected to act and look a certain way. I’m not talking about something like hockey players letting their beards grow in the playoffs — for all intents and purposes, this is sanctioned. Under the NBA’s umbrella, Rodman was a misfit, partly to troll the media, but also because that was just who he was as a person. Not everyone could be Michael Jordan. People may not want to admit it, but Rodman was probably “the common man” of the NBA because it was evident in his play that he was, in fact, human. He was like us in the bleachers or watching at home.
Fast forward to now. Since Rodman left the league, there hasn’t been another person like him. More players sport tattoos in today’s NBA, but the walls Rodman pushed against are still in place. This is pretty much true across all the major sports in the United States. This is also why I clicked on a trending story this morning.
The “300-Pound Pitcher” is Ben Ancheff. In 4.1 innings, he struck out five batters, while giving up one run and two hits. He left the game with arm soreness, but if his arm had been healthy, one wonders if St. Thomas would’ve won the game (they lost 7–10).
If you’ve ever seen a professional baseball game, I can almost guarantee you’ve never seen anyone on the field, much less a pitcher, who looked like Ancheff. He is not the “typical” athlete. His official stats list him as 6’2” and 300 pounds. Pretty close to my own stats. And he’s a pitcher, the position I always wanted to play in little league ball.
Now the question becomes, why has Ancheff become famous, literally overnight? He was pitching a good game before he left, but it wasn’t like he was riding a perfect game or a no-hitter. This was not the first game of the season he pitched either — he had appeared in 17 games and had a 3–2 record with an ERA of 5.40. The NAIA World Series is not exactly a marquee event (it was on ESPN 3).
Ancheff is now famous because he is a fat person who has demonstrated worth — in this case, athletic ability. But because he is fat, his physical appearance is tied to every story, it is the story. Bleacher Report’s tweet about him, favorited over 3K times, reads, in part: “St. Thomas Bobcats’ 300-pound pitcher Ben Ancheff.” @PtNoted (182K followers) tweeted: “BASEBALL: 300-Pound St. Thomas Bobcats pitcher Ben Ancheff” with a photo of the right-hander. Timothy Burke, for Deadspin, writes in part: “But it wasn’t his 5.40 ERA or his unimpressive 3–2 record that blew everybody’s heads off; it was his girth. So much girth. Look at this fuckin’ guy!” A larger than normal person demonstrated athletic prowess and this is an astonishing revelation.
What I worry is that in a week, maybe a month, Ancheff will only be remembered as a fat guy who pitched in a game (and by that time, no one will even remember it was a World Series game). I worry no MLB team will take a chance on him, collective memory loss will settle back in, and sports fans will again forget that fat people can be athletes as much as anyone else can. Then, sometime later, there’ll be another Ben Ancheff, but his or her name won’t be Ben Ancheff. But the misfits among us, the other fat people who enjoy playing sports, we’ll remember Ben. And myself, 6’3”, around 300 pounds, still clinging to an adolescent dream of being a knuckleball pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, I’ll remember Ben, too.
