As a species, the knuckleball flutters but survives

Gamboa, 31, is a nonroster invitee of the Tampa Bay Rays who showed up Sunday at Charlotte Sports Park for the first day of workouts for pitchers and catchers. He wears No. 73, befitting someone with no major league experience. Sort of.

In April, before a weekend game at Camden Yards, the Baltimore Orioles called Gamboa to the majors. He rushed to the ballpark, arriving in midgame and reporting directly to the bullpen. He spent two days on the active roster but did not pitch. He wished he had, of course, but added that his knuckler might not have been ready.

Gamboa’s brief promotion could be the extent of his major league career. But he offers hope, at least, for the future of the major league knuckleballer, a species that seems to number no more than four or five — but always more than zero — at any given time.

“I told Eddie, ‘Listen, you’ve got to let it happen,’” said Charlie Haeger, who threw knucklers for three teams and is now the Rays’ pitching coordinator. “If you try to rush it, if you try to push this thing and don’t properly get the process taken care of, you can be at a disadvantage.

“Think about it: A regular guy can get away with a 95-mile-an-hour pitch down the middle. We don’t get away with those very often. The process is longer, but the career can obviously be extended with what we’re doing, too.”

R.A. Dickey of the Toronto Blue Jays is the only knuckleballer in a major league starting rotation. At 41, Dickey is the oldest player in the American League and the third oldest in the majors, behind the New York Mets’ Bartolo Colon and Miami’s Ichiro Suzuki, who are 42.

Because throwing a knuckleball does not engage the muscles that impart spin on a ball, those who throw it tend to last much longer. Learning the pitch resets a pitcher’s clock. Steven Wright, who has made 11 starts for Boston in the past three seasons, converted to the knuckleball five years ago while in the Cleveland farm system. He is 31, and his career may just be starting.

“I remember when I first started throwing it, Mark Shapiro told me, ‘You’re the one guy where age is just a number,’” Wright said, referring to the Cleveland Indians’ president at the time. “‘It doesn’t matter. To us, you’re 21 again. You just need to grow with it. The more you throw it, the better feel you’ll get for it, the more confidence you’ll get with it, and we just want you to build off of that.’”

Confidence is an issue for Gamboa, a factor that has, so far, helped keep him from joining Dickey and Wright on major league mounds. For the Orioles’ Class AAA team last season, Gamboa walked 84 and struck out 79, with a 4.61 earned run average.

“Depressing, to say the least,” he said. “It was really tough, because I came from a career where walks were never an issue. I always pitched to contact. To put people on base and give a free base, that was tough, physically and mentally.

“But I went to winter ball this offseason, and I mixed it in with all my pitches. I was fortunate things went really well.”

Gamboa estimates that he threw the knuckleball only 40 percent of the time in winter ball. If he could control it better, he said, he would happily throw it more often. Niekro said Gamboa must trust the pitch.

“He’s got to get up to that 80, 85 percent,” Niekro said. “That’s what I keep telling him. Every time he gets into a little trouble or doesn’t quite get the knuckleball over or doesn’t feel good, he goes back to the other stuff, and he kind of gets them out and stays with the other stuff, other than committing — or recommitting — to the knuckleball the whole ballgame. You’ve got to commit to it. That’s what Wakefield finally did.”

Tim Wakefield had pitched parts of two seasons in the majors when Pittsburgh released him in 1995. He signed with the Boston Red Sox, who arranged for him to work with Phil and Joe Niekro, another longtime knuckleballer who died in 2006. Wakefield pitched 17 seasons for Boston.

Dan Duquette, who signed Wakefield for the Red Sox and now directs the Orioles’ baseball operations, brought Phil Niekro to spring training to see another minor leaguer in 2013. A coach suggested Niekro also look at Gamboa, who was then a conventional pitcher with ordinary stuff.

Gamboa had fiddled with a knuckleball since he learned it from his father at age 12. At Merced High School in California, he clinched the Sac-Joaquin Section Division I championship by using a knuckleball to strike out the final hitter for Elk Grove.

When he showed it off again in an impromptu audition for the greatest knuckleballer alive, Niekro, the pitch still worked.

“He threw about six or seven pitches, and I said, ‘Boy, this guy’s got a major league knuckleball,’” Niekro said. He shared his opinion with Duquette, and from then on, Gamboa has tried to ride his knuckler to the majors. He knows he must throw it more, and he plans to do so.

“Eventually, I think I’m going to get to that, because the goal is to have a long career,” Gamboa said. “When you get older, you start losing fastball, you start losing arm speed. So with the knuckleball, arm speed, none of that matters. So I want to work toward that. I still feel like I have enough arm in me to battle at this level and miss some bats.”

Other knuckleballers are also hoping for a chance. Niekro said he had gotten more and more inquiries for help since 2012, when Dickey won the National League Cy Young Award for the Mets. Besides signing Gamboa this winter, the Rays signed Jeff Howell, a converted catcher who threw knuckleballs in Class A last season.

The scarcity of former knuckleballers to teach the pitch makes it harder to spread. But in Haeger, at least, Gamboa will have a nearby resource to help the pitch survive. It always seems to be on the brink of extinction, but it always endures.

“It’s never going to be mastered,” Haeger said. “I don’t think there is such a thing. But it can be utilized, that’s for sure. It’s an unpredictable pitch for us, at times — but it’s really unpredictable for the guys with the bats.”