Knuckleball! is available for free on Roku and to rent/buy on Amazon PRIME.
The film focuses on MLB’s last two great knuckleball pitchers, Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey, and documents Wakefield’s last season in MLB and his quest to win 200 games, which he accomplished in 2011. For his part, Dickey’s knuckleball was so good in 2012 that he won the Cy Young Award with a record of 20-6 and a 2.73 ERA. Also featured are Hall of Fame knuckleballer Phil Niekro (318 wins) and others who relied on the specialty pitch, including Charlie Hough, Tom Candiotti, and Jim Bouton.
“Knuckleball” is a misnomer. The ball is not thrown with the knuckles resting upon it. Rather, the fingernails dig into the ball, often resting on the seams. When thrown correctly, the ball has zero spin, causing it to dart and move erratically. The pitcher doesn’t even know where it’s going, and catchers have a miserable time corralling it.
Knuckleballers are told to forget everything they have ever been taught about pitching. Trained to try to dominate with hard stuff, they are now throwing a ball that ranges in speed from the high 50s to 80 mph. In clutch situations, when their instinct is to throw harder, they have to learn to throw softer to control the pitch better. That requires great trust and patience.
Managers also need a huge level of trust and patience. Some days the knuckleball is dazzling hitters; on other days it is eminently hittable. The good managers stick with their knuckleballers through thick and thin, believing that in the long run they will produce more wins than losses. Managers learn to live with passed balls and stolen bases, hoping the effectiveness of the pitch will counteract those inevitable drawbacks.
Tim Wakefield (courtesy Mercury News)
Knuckleballers are a tight-knit fraternity, and Wakefield and Dickey attribute their success to advice from their mentors — Wakefield from Hough and Candiotti, and Dickey from Niekro. Dickey also got valuable tips from Wakefield. As Dickey put it, “Knuckleballers don’t keep secrets.”
R.A. Dickey (photo, Keeping Score Blog, TIME)
All knuckleballers have to overcome the stigma of relying on what others look at as a novelty pitch, or, as Dickey describes it, a “circus pitch.” They are often not respected as real pitchers, even though all of them came up as regular hurlers.
They realized they did not have as good stuff as the younger hurlers advancing in the ranks, and the knuckleball saved their careers. Most knuckleballers improve with age, coming into their own in their 30s, and they can pitch a long time – Wakefield retired at age 45, Hough at 46, Niekro at 48!
It was painful to watch Wakefield giving up a home run to the Yankees’ Aaron Boone in the 11th inning of Game Seven of the 2003 American League Championship Series at Yankee Stadium. Wakefield had started and won Games One and Four, and was called upon to pitch the 10th and 11th innings in Game Seven, so he went from hero to goat with one pitch. With a knuckleball, all it takes is one pitch that hangs instead of dances.
Wakefield first got interested in the knuckleball from playing catch in his backyard with his dad, Steve.
Steve Wakefield: If Tim asked me to go out in the yard and play catch, I always said yes. But then he’d want to play and play and play, so I started throwing knuckleballs at him. He didn’t like it. Eventually, he’d say, ‘OK, I’ve had enough.’
Drafted as a position player by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1988, Wakefield was flailing at the plate, hitting below .200. Woody Huyke, his minor league manager in extended spring training, then saw something that changed Wakefield’s career. The young player was fooling around with the knuckleball while playing catch with a teammate, and Huyke saw how difficult it was to catch.
The Pirates made him a pitcher. When the Pirates called him up to the big league club four years later in July 1992, Wakefield’s debut was a complete game, a 3-2 win with 10 strikeouts. He finished the season 8-1 with a 2.15 ERA. But then Wakefield struggled mightily in 1993, going 6-11 with a 5.61 ERA, and ended up back in Triple-A for all of 1994.
The Pirates released Wakefield at the start of the 1995 season, but the Red Sox were smart enough to sign him. Wakefield, who worked tirelessly at his craft, had a great year with the Sox, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Dickey, who had been a power pitcher with the Texas Rangers, began to lose velocity on his fastball in 2004 and 2005 to a maximum of 86 mph. That’s when pitching coach Orel Hershiser advised him to abandon every other pitch and throw the knuckleball exclusively. That advice turned his career around.
Jim Bouton showing off his knuckler (courtesy Press Pros Magazine)
As an aside, Jim Bouton should have followed that advice when he faced me in a semi-pro league game after his retirement from Major League Baseball. Eating me up with his knuckler–I had a chance to face him–Bouton made the mistake of throwing a fastball. You can read that story here.
Wakefield and Dickey agree that contact guys, like Bill Buckner, were the toughest batters they faced, but free swingers, like Albert Pujols, were easy pickings for the knuckleballers.
Knuckleball! also pays tribute to knuckleball pioneers Hoyt Wilhelm and Wilbur Wood. After Wakefield retired, Dickey carried the knuckleball torch until his retirement after the 2017 season. The only current Major Leaguer to rely on the knuckleball is Matt Waldron of the San Diego Padres, but his career record is 8-15 with a 4.86 ERA.
Knuckleballers may get a bad rap (pun intended), but it takes courage to withstand the ups and downs of throwing the unique pitch. As Dickey put it, “You may hit me. You may knock me around, and knock balls out of the park. But I am always going to get back up and keep coming at you.”
