As one of the few remaining practitioners of the knuckleball in the major leagues, Blue Jays pitcher R.A. Dickey is optimistic about its future.
The demise of the knuckleball has been predicted for years, but when you least expect it, someone comes up out of nowhere to keep the flame burning.
"I sure hope it's going to be an enduring pitch," Dickey said. "My hope is that it will remain part of the fabric of the game forever.
"It's such a unique thing, a part of baseball. I remember following the history of it (as a young fan). At one point I think the White Sox even had four in their rotation.
"So it makes the game pretty interesting to have a guy like that out there."
Dickey, 40, is one of two knuckleballers throwing in the majors, along with the Red Sox's 30-year-old Steven Wright. The Orioles' Eddie Gamboa, 30, currently at Triple-A Norfolk, could be the next in line if he gets a late-season call-up.
A typical knuckleball grip includes the middle and index finger dug inside the seam with knuckles high to keep the ball from spinning as it heads toward the plate. The enemy of the knuckleball is spin, though a good one dips and dives at the last second, often making hitters look foolish.
In this day and age, with so many pitchers throwing in the middle to upper 90s, there doesn't seem to be a need for trick pitches like a knuckler or screwball. That, and the degree of difficulty in mastering the pitch, is why there are so few left.
"It's really a pitch borne out of attrition and survival," Dickey said. "So when you can't do the thing you once could do very well anymore, and you want to keep playing the game, that's something you can turn to if you've always had a good one."
Dickey's grandfather, R.G. Bowers, taught him the knuckleball when he was growing up. Arm problems led to a loss of his fastball early in his career, and Dickey turned to the knuckler as a last resort.
"I put it in my back pocket at the time, and I never needed it because I threw hard," he said. "But then when I stopped throwing hard and wanted to keep playing, that was my go-to pitch."
Dickey won a Cy Young Award with the Mets in 2012 _ the first knuckleballer to do so. But it didn't lead major-league executives to search for the next R.A. Dickey.
Knuckleballer Charlie Hough averaged 240 innings pitched and 15 victories per year from 1982-90 while chain-smoking cigarettes at his locker. Hoyt Wilhelm, Wilbur Wood and Phil and Joe Niekro were among the star knuckleballers of the 1950s, '60s and '70s, but they didn't spark a revival either.
"There's a plethora of reasons," Dickey said. "First of all, there's no scout out there looking for the next Wilbur Wood. They're all looking for the next Stephen Strasburg or (Justin) Verlander."
So will the knuckler still be around in another 10 years?
"I don't think it'll die out," Blue Jays starter David Price said. "Somebody is going to come around with a very good knuckleball. I'm waiting for a guy who's going to be able to have a really good slider and a good fastball to go with it.
"Somebody is going to be able to throw a hard knuckleball and still be able to throw 92, 93 (mph) with another really good pitch to go along with it. When that guy comes along, he could definitely have a chance to do something special."
Dickey said that would be difficult because knuckleballers have to focus on their main pitch so much they wouldn't be able to mix in fastballs much.
Dickey's fastball tops out about 85 mph, and his knuckleball is around 80-81 mph. He said he throws fastballs only 5 percent of the time as a "show-me" pitch. Knuckleballers have to go with the knuckler even in fastball counts.
"One of the things you have to accept when you're a knuckleballer is to live and die with that throw," he said. "That's kind of where I am."
Could someone ever mix in a 95-mph fastball and knucklers?
"To throw a good one, it's hard to go back and forth, to have your foot in both buckets," Dickey said. "I'm not saying it can't be done, and if you ever found the guy who could do it, watch out.
"But it's hard to throw it consistently for strikes. If you're not throwing it all the time as your primary pitch, it's really tough."
Hitting one is even tougher, some say.
"I don't think any sane man would say it's easy to hit a knuckleball," former catcher Tim McCarver said. "Duke Snider told me he played catch with (first baseman) Gil Hodges at Ebbets Field and Hodges had an excellent knuckleball. Position players have been fooling around with it for years.
"Duke said what he found out from catching Hodges' knuckleball is that if you held your hands relaxed to the last minute, that was the best way to catch it. So if that was the best way to catch it, that's also the best way to hit it.
"That's the best theory I ever heard espoused. Wait as long as possible."
McCarver recalled calling for a knuckleball from Barney Schultz on the first pitch of the ninth inning in a 1-1 tie with the Yankees in Game 3 of the 1964 World Series. Mickey Mantle homered for the game-winning hit.
"It was a glorious clout, too, I'll tell you," McCarver said.
While he was glad to discuss the subject, McCarver doesn't think the lack of knuckleballers today means anything.
"There were never a lot of them," he said. "There are a couple in the Hall of Fame. It's a hard pitch to control, a hard pitch to catch, a hard pitch to hit. But as (former catcher) Bob Uecker used to say, 'The best way to catch a knuckleball is wait until it stops rolling and pick it up.' "
The White Sox used several back in the day, including Wood, Wilhelm and Eddie Fisher. Wood once pitched five innings of relief and got the victory in a 21-inning game against the Indians on May 28, 1973, at old Comiskey Park, finishing a suspended game, then pitched a shutout in the regularly scheduled game to improve to 13-3 with a 1.71 ERA.
Two months later, Wood was the last pitcher to start both ends of a doubleheader _ against the Yankees on July 20, 1973, at Comiskey. He failed to retire a single hitter in the opener and was removed with no outs during an eight-run first inning, then came back to start the nightcap and allowed seven runs (five earned) in 4 1/3 innings to absorb his second loss of the day, leaving him at 18-14.
Asked if he could pull that stunt today, Dickey laughed.
"I might be able to do it," he said. "But probably more so I could pitch on shorter rest. I think that pitch allows you to be a little more resilient and that would allow you to throw more innings if you could be on short rest."
The end of the craziest pitch in baseball may be coming in our lifetime, but Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo said he doesn't think it will become extinct soon.
"We'll see more knuckleballers," he said. "All the knuckleballers I know were knuckleballers out of necessity, and we're always going to have those guys who either pitched in the big leagues or played in the big leagues and want to stay in the big leagues and something happened where they can't throw like they used to. (Tim) Wakefield comes to mind.
"You start fooling around with it and all of a sudden you have another career."
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