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The knuckleball
edmundfitzgerald
Posts: 4,306 ✭✭
in Sports Talk
Two questions...........
1. Who has thrown the pitch besides..........
A. Tim Wakefield
B. Hoyt Wilhelm
C. The Neikro's
D. The kid who is currently on Seattle (can't think of his name)
E. Wilbur Wood ???
2. (More important question)
Doug Mirabelli was well known as Tim Wakefield's personal catcher. Did any other
knuckleballer in MLB history have his own personal catcher the way Wake did ?
I remember a catcher on the Astros had this huge glove he caught with, but I
can not remember his name.
TIA
1. Who has thrown the pitch besides..........
A. Tim Wakefield
B. Hoyt Wilhelm
C. The Neikro's
D. The kid who is currently on Seattle (can't think of his name)
E. Wilbur Wood ???
2. (More important question)
Doug Mirabelli was well known as Tim Wakefield's personal catcher. Did any other
knuckleballer in MLB history have his own personal catcher the way Wake did ?
I remember a catcher on the Astros had this huge glove he caught with, but I
can not remember his name.
TIA
0
Comments
Peace
45% complete.
Good link, Washington had an all knuckleball starting rotation in the 40's.
Peace
45% complete.
BTW: Cubby=Cub Fan
Link
Monday, March 17, 2008
Updated: March 18, 12:57 PM ET
Why didn't Mama teach me the knuckleball?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Jim Caple
Page 2
PEORIA, Ariz. -- By the eighth or ninth time -- or perhaps the 12th or 13th -- I ran to the backstop to chase after a pitch from Seattle's R.A. Dickey, I should have asked myself, "Why don't more pitchers learn to throw the knuckleball? And why don't more teams teach it to their borderline pitchers?
"And most importantly, given how much money Tim Wakefield has made throwing it, why didn't someone ever teach me how to throw the knuckleball?"
After all, Phil Niekro is in the Hall of Fame thanks to the knuckler. So is Hoyt Wilhelm. Jim Bouton wrote the best book ever about baseball but he wouldn't have been able to document his summer with the 1969 Seattle Pilots in "Ball Four" had he not extended his career with the knuckleball. And in perhaps the best case of all for the pitch, Wakefield was an infielder trapped in the minor leagues until he started learning the knuckleball and switched to pitching. He's won 168 games and earned more than $40 million.
So wouldn't it make sense for a pitcher who realized he was coming up just a tiny bit shy of reaching the majors, who was missing just that little something, to augment the rest of his talent with the knuckleball and save a career? It did to Dickey.
A former first-round pick and Olympian, Dickey has a career record of 16-19 with a 5.72 ERA. He last pitched in the majors two years ago when he allowed a record six home runs in his only start of the season (the Rangers sent him back to the minors the next day). He's 33, an age when teams aren't exactly beating down an agent's door with contract offers. But after experimenting with the knuckler three years ago under the tutelage of Charlie Hough, Dickey threw it well enough to be named the Pacific Coast League pitcher of the year in 2007 for the Brewers' Triple-A team. The Twins signed him after the season and then the Mariners picked him in the Rule 5 draft over the winter. With a 1.50 ERA this spring, he'll likely make Seattle's Opening Day roster.
And that will be only one of the hurdles in establishing himself as a winning big league knuckleballer.
"Charlie Hough told me, 'It took me one day to learn how to throw [the knuckler] and a lifetime to throw it for strikes,'" Dickey said. "There's something to that statement, in that it's a tough pitch to control. You're trying to control something that's really uncontrollable. The beauty of it is that if I don't know what it's going to do, there's no way a hitter knows what it's going to do -- and that's the effectiveness of it."
Forget about the hitter or the pitcher. The catcher isn't sure where the pitch is going to go either. Believe me, I know after Dickey was kind enough to throw about 50 knucklers to me after a Mariners workout earlier this month. I donned the full array of catcher's gear -- especially the cup -- and readied myself to become the next Doug Mirabelli. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a couple pillows from my hotel room.
To be honest, it wasn't catching the movement of Dickey's knuckleball that worried me; it was handling a pitch thrown at that velocity. Unlike most knuckleballers who throw the pitch in the mid-60s, Dickey throws a hard knuckler from 70 to 80 miles per hour with an occasional fastball mixed in.
Though five appearances this spring, opponents are batting just .209 against R.A. Dickey.
"It's a big challenge catching it," Mariners catcher Jamie Burke told me. "He throws it hard so that makes it a lot tougher to catch. It doesn't just float up there."
No kidding. I knew I was in trouble when Dickey and I were playing catch to warm up and one of his throws tipped off my glove and whizzed past my ear. "Oh, god," Dickey said. "You might want to put the mask on now."
Sometimes Dickey's knuckleball danced like a drunk hummingbird. Other times it dove into the dirt like a nasty splitter. Other times it appeared to rise (I know, I know -- that's impossible, but it looks like it rises). Often it broke late and dramatically and tipped off my glove and skipped to the backstop. Every once in awhile it moved so much and so haphazardly that I couldn't even get my glove on it. Catching Dickey, I was reminded of Bob Uecker's famous line about the secret to handling the knuckleball: "Just wait until it stops rolling and pick it up."
Actually, I did better behind the plate than I expected. I caught around two-thirds of Dickey's pitches and avoided breaking any fingers. A jammed thumb was my worst injury, and that wasn't bad at all compared to taking a 75 mph pitch off my cup. Truth be told, I fared better catching pitches from Dickey than throwing the ball back to him (I fear not a single worm survived my relentless attack of ball after ball striking the mound).
With the backstop in need of repair, I took off my catching gear and took a few lessons from Dickey on how to throw the knuckleball. I wasn't a quick learner. My first attempt showed a slight sign of hope, but each subsequent toss got worse and worse. Dickey is an intelligent, good-natured and patient man, but after a while even he gave up on me, telling me as politely as possible that it would take me several years at least to learn the pitch. But I'm only 46 and Phil Niekro pitched until he was 48, so there is still some hope.
The biggest concern is I would need to find a team willing to sign me, which seems unlikely given how unenthusiastic teams are about the pitch. I don't quite understand this. Teams have 70-plus pitchers in their farm systems and they know most will never reach the majors. Why not take a group of these pitchers and teach them the knuckleball so that perhaps some might develop into valuable big league pitchers? If Wakefield could do it so well -- and Dickey shows such promise -- why can't others?
For one thing, Diamondbacks pitching coach Bryan Price says, "It's an unpredictable pitch and until you have the ability of a Wakefeld or someone like that, it's very difficult to get a good result from that guy as he makes mistakes. When knuckleballers make a mistake, the ball gets hit a long way. Most significantly, it's a time investment and you're also giving away a roster spot at Double-A or Triple-A to an experimental guy when you would rather give it to someone you think might really be able to help you.
"Plus, you need a pitcher with the right mind-set. You take a guy and tell him to start throwing a knuckleball, he might say, 'Screw it, I'm going to another organization and try to do it conventionally.' So you have to have a lot of things go right. You have to have the roster spot to develop him, the time to develop him and the guy has to be willing to try it."
As Dickey says, "Everybody's kind of wired to throw hard, throw fast. … We kind of live in an era now where harder is better, faster is better, stronger is better. And that's not what a knuckleballer is. A knuckleballer is more finesse and feel -- a blue-collar type. I'm not going to flash up a 96 mph fastball, and that's what the guns and the management and everybody wants to see." Plus, "You don't come up throwing a knuckleball. You're not drafted as a knuckleball guy. It's almost something you become."
There's another obstacle as well.
"How many teams have someone in their organization who are really comfortable teaching someone the knuckleball?" Price said. "In the season there were the most knuckleballers, how many were there? Five or six guys? And because there are so few guys who throw it, that means there are only so many guys who can teach it. There are only so many guys like Hough and Niekro who really have the ability to teach the pitch."
Well, I still think it would be in a team's interest to set up a knuckleball academy, perhaps as part of the Arizona Fall League or some such thing, where they bring in Niekro or Hough to teach one or two dozen pitchers and see what happens.
Of course, there is one more issue: If you develop all these knuckleballers, you need to find someone to catch them.
Which again, isn't an insurmountable obstacle. For one thing, the Red Sox just released Mirabelli, so he's available. And … well, there's also me.
What's the record for passed balls in a season?
BOX SCORE LINE OF THE WEEK
I wasn't the only civilian taking the field recently. A slightly more famous person not only played with his favorite team, he signed an official contract with the Yankees and played in an actual Grapefruit League game. And while Billy Crystal struck out, Mr. March did manage a foul ball and also ran the count to 3-2, which is no minor accomplishment against big league pitching, especially at age 59. His line:
1 AB, 0 R, 0 H, 0 RBI, 1 strikeout
How do you feel about celebrities turning spring training into their own personal fantasy camp? I'm sorry, but I just can't get that bent out of shape over it (and believe me, I would if I could). Crystal is hardly the first celeb to take part in spring training, and he won't be the last. Tiger Woods recently batted against John Smoltz. Tom Selleck used to bat with the Tigers. M.C. Hammer, a former clubhouse kid with Oakland, took BP with the Twins once. And Garth Brooks has played so many spring games with the Royals that he could qualify for arbitration.
And don't give me this, "It hurts the integrity of the game" nonsense. This is spring training for crying out loud. There are guys running through the outfield in their underwear during games. And if you're worried about the integrity of the game being damaged by Billy Crystal, you've never looked at some of the non-roster invitees in Rays camp. The only downside for the Yankees is they've set themselves up for a lot of punchlines should they finish short of the postseason.
Anything that breaks up the monotony of spring training is welcome and, frankly, watching Crystal bat is a whole lot more interesting than watching, say, Jason Brown. And funny, isn't it, how the very same people who complain about these celebrity appearances are usually just as excited to see them play as everyone else?
Of course, if Jimmy Fallon shows up anywhere near a field, we can only hope his opponent is working on beanballs that day.
TELL YOUR STATISTICS TO SHUT UP
• Everyone wants players and coaches to be as safe as possible, but it sounded a little like an overprotective Little League parent was in charge when general managers voted over the winter to require helmets for the first- and third-base coaches. This edict was a well-meaning reaction to the death of Mike Coolbaugh, a minor league first-base coach killed last season when he was struck in the head by a line drive. Rather than looking a little silly, however, the helmets are barely noticeable this spring. They don't have earflaps and look pretty much like the souvenir helmets sold by vendors, except these helmets are designed to protect the head.
"I have no problem with wearing one," said Arizona third-base coach Chip Hale. He acknowledged that the helmet might get a little hot and uncomfortable during the summer months but "I'll just get used to it." However, while the base coaches must wear the helmets, there is no rule requiring the manager and other coaches to wear helmets when they sit outside the dugout by the edge of the backstop (which is their traditional spot during spring training games), where they are much more exposed and in danger.
• After beginning the Cactus League 0-for-21 (0-for-23 if you count a charity game), Ichiro beat out an infield single to second base last Thursday to end considerable angst among the Japanese media. But don't look for the historic ball on eBay or anywhere else soon. "I was planning to keep the ball and send it to Cooperstown," Ichiro said, "but I couldn't get the ball back and make it a reality." And just to show that fans need not worry too much about the man who holds the record for most hits in a season, Ichiro homered in the next game. Seattle's prospects look much better this spring than last -- when fans were counting down the days to Mike Hargrove's eventual departure -- thanks to the addition of Erik Bedard and Carlos "You Paid Him How Much?" Silva, as well as growing list of injuries to the Angels' starting pitchers. If Seattle can get enough offense, the Mariners should be a real threat in the American League West.
Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached here. His Web site is at jimcaple.net.
<< <i>http://www.oddball-mall.com/knuckleball/list.htm
Good link, Washington had an all knuckleball starting rotation in the 40's.
Peace >>
Steve Sparks is the only not on this list that I can think of, though there are probably several others. Some of the pitchers like Zane Smith really only tried to use it, but were never able to see any success throwing it
Triandos may have been the first catcher to use the extremely oversized glove to catch the knuckleball
BTW: Cubby=Cub Fan
he AND Niekro were on the Indians at the same time
Catchers are WIMPS....."oh poor me, I cant catch the damn ball"
I say shut up you spoiled millionaires and do your job lol.
<< <i> Catchers are WIMPS....."oh poor me, I cant catch the damn ball"
I say shut up you spoiled millionaires and do your job lol. >>
Pick it up once it stops rolling and quit whining