Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball

by Wayne Coffey

  Meeting Charlie Hough, for me, is akin to meeting Cy Young himself.

  Like a hyped-up schoolkid, I start peppering Charlie with questions within minutes of shaking his hand, the subject, of course, being baseball’s most mysterious, most misnamed, and most unappreciated pitch.

  It is a pitch, I am learning, that is as hard to predict as it is to catch.

  Or as Charlie once said: “Butterflies aren’t bullets. You can’t aim ’em. You just let ’em go.”

  The Rangers want Charlie to take a look at me and assess my prospects for succeeding as a knuckleball pitcher. I want him to teach me everything he knows. We have a lot to get done. I look at his squinty face and think: This is probably how it feels to talk about the Bible with the pope, or about social networking with Mark Zuckerberg.

  Let’s see you throw, Charlie says to me.

  We make our way down the tunnel to the dugout, across the field, to the bullpen, shoulder to shoulder, the sensei and the student. I am nervous.

  What if Charlie tells the Rangers he thinks my knuckleball stinks? What if he tells them it is his considered opinion that this four-month-old experiment—reinventing R. A. Dickey, a long-ago phenom and ninety-three-mile-per-hour sinkerballer, into a flutterballer—is going nowhere?

  I hate my insecurities. I do my best to ignore them.

  Why did you start throwing your knuckleball? I ask him.

  I hurt my arm in the minor leagues, he says. I started throwing it for the same reason almost all of us do: because it was my only chance of getting to the big leagues.

  How long did it take you to learn it?

  I learned how to throw it in a day, but it took me most of a career to be able to throw it for strikes. And that’s the key to everything. You can have the best knuckleball in the world and it ain’t worth a darn thing if you can’t get it over the plate.

  How do you learn to control it? What can I do to speed up my learning curve?

  You throw it and you keep throwing it. You throw it every day. You find guys to catch you. You throw it against outfield walls. You throw it against alley walls. You keep at it. It takes time and it takes patience to get the feel for it and to master it, and even after you think you have, you better have a real thick skin if you are going to be a knuckleball pitcher.

  Why is that?

  Because you are going to have games when you throw five wild pitches or give up four home runs—games when you just don’t have it. Every pitcher is going to have games when he doesn’t have it, even Hall of Fame pitchers. The difference is that when you have an ugly game as a knuckleball pitcher, it’s really ugly. It’s going to happen, I promise you. You have to keep faith in yourself and your pitch, even if everybody else loses faith.

  In the bullpen, I anxiously throw a dozen or so knuckleballs for Charlie. He asks me to show him my grip, and I hold the ball up with the fingernails of my index and middle fingers biting into the runway, the part of the ball where the seams come closest together. He suggests I move my nails to just underneath the horseshoe, a small change but actually a completely different grip.

  I think you’ll find it’s a better way to kill the spin and control the pitch, Charlie says.

  I do as he says, throwing a pitch with his grip. It feels weird. I keep throwing. The weirdness never lifts—not that day, not for days and weeks afterwards—but I stay with it.

  I never throw a ball with my old grip again.

  And from that day forward, I never fail to take the mound without thinking about staying inside the doorframe, either.

  Charlie is big on visuals, and the doorframe is the best of them. After watching my delivery, with an overhead windup and arms and legs extending in various directions, Charlie stops me and tells me to imagine a doorway. Imagine throwing the pitch in such a way that all of your movements, and your limbs, are confined to that opening.

  If you are flying all over—if your hand is hitting the side of the imaginary doorframe—what’s going to happen? he asks. The ball will be more likely to spin. Spin is the enemy, especially backward spin. You want to simplify things. You want fewer moving pieces and to have all those pieces moving forward toward the plate.

  Why is spin so bad?

  Because the knuckleballs that spin are the ones you don’t get back, Charlie says. Maybe you can get away with a little forward spin, but backward spin? Forget it. Those are the ones that sit up. Those are the ones that wind up way back in the seats.

  I nod, and start trying to control my limbs, to stay inside the doorway. My mind is tumbling, trying to process all the new information. I throw for Charlie on successive days. After about a hundred pitches on the second day, Charlie tells me to stop. We head back across the field. I am drenched in sweat and doubt. I don’t have any feel for how I’ve done. Charlie is a jolly, affable man, but he’s also totally old-school, not one to go overboard with compliments. Finally I get up my courage and ask him straight-out.

  Do you think I can do this?

  He squints at me and gives me a tight little smile.

  I think you have a chance, he says.

  THE KNUCKLEBALL is the only pitch in baseball that works by doing nothing. Curveballs curve. Cutters cut. Sinkers sink. The knuckleball? You want it to float to the plate, rotation-free, and let the laws of entropy or aerodynamics or whatever else is in play take over from there, the air rushing around it, the seams creating a drag, the ball wobbling and wiggling and shimmying and shaking. Or not. Sometimes the knuckleball will be unhittable and sometimes it will be uncatchable, but rarely is it predictable. You can throw two knuckleballs with the identical release, the identical motion, in the identical place, and one might go one way and the second might go another way. It’s one of the first things you have to accept as a knuckleballer: the pitch has a mind of its own. You either embrace it for what it is—a pitch that is reliant on an amalgam of forces both seen and unseen—or you allow it to drive you half out of your mind.

  I embrace it.

  If you like order and logic to your baseball world, you better find another pitch to throw. If you like your manager to fully understand what you are doing, you better change pitches too. Midway through my year with the Mariners in 2008, manager Jim Riggleman walked up to me one day and basically said he had no idea how to manage me or help me. Terry Collins said pretty much the same thing when he took over the Mets in 2011. I didn’t take it as an insult. I took it as honesty.

  Baseball people are loath to trust the knuckleball and quick to judge it. If there were a caste system of baseball pitches, the knuckleball would be the untouchables. This isn’t idle knuckleballer’s paranoia. It’s the truth. What happens when a conventional pitcher gets lit up and is knocked out in the fourth inning? What do you hear?

  “He couldn’t command his breaking stuff.”

  “He didn’t have his good fastball.”

  “He was working from behind in the count.”

  There are umpteen reasons why the guy’s getting hit. When Tim Wakefield or I get roughed up, it’s that weirdo pitch we throw. You never know what you are going to get with it. You just can’t trust it.

  Because it’s a dadgum knuckleball.

  The knuckleball’s lowly status, I’m convinced, has everything to do with velocity. Or lack of it. Baseball is completely obsessed with speed, with the readings on the ubiquitous radar guns—devices that have done more to screw up the evaluation of pitchers than probably anything else in the history of the game. Pitchers want to know what they hit on the things. People go nuts if somebody registers triple digits . . . and go into a full panic if the numbers slip. I’m not saying the radar gun can’t be a useful measuring stick at times, but to reduce pitching to little red digits on a machine is absurd. Ray Miller, the venerable pitching coach, once described pitching as the art of missing bats. You miss bats with location and deception and by messing up a hitter’s timing. You don’t just miss them with a 99-mile-per-hour heater. Greg Maddux is lucky he isn’t coming up now: he might have
a hard time getting out of Double-A ball.

  Is it any wonder that knuckleballers stick together? We may not have anybody else, but we have each other. We are part of the game’s tightest fraternity. You don’t often see guys who throw splitters or circle changeups trading tips or techniques, but knuckleballers do it all the time. When I was in the American League and we were facing the Red Sox and Tim Wakefield was on the mound, I always rooted the same way: for Wake to pitch a great game, and for us to win. Knuckleballers may be a freak show at sixty feet six inches, but the freaks stick together.

  My first throwing session with Charlie convinces me that I need to spend more time with him. Twice in that offseason I go out to see him at his home in California. We head out to a ball field at Cypress College. I throw and throw some more, and because I’m not stressing my arm by maxing out the velocity, I can keep on throwing.

  Pitch count should never be an issue for you again, Charlie says.

  With every pitch, I stick with Charlie’s grip, staying inside Charlie’s doorframe. I am starting to get it, though I am still confused.

  How do I know when I’ve thrown a good one? I ask.

  You’ll know by how it comes out of your hand. You’ll know in that instant. You won’t need to see it cross the plate or see a batter swing.

  If the knuckleball is so effective, how come so few people throw it? I ask.

  Because it’s really hard and it takes a lot of patience. More patience than most people have, he says.

  Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Fifty thousand? I don’t know how many knuckleballs I throw that winter, but it’s a lot. A whole lot. I throw the bulk of them against a white cinder-block wall in the gym of the Ensworth School in Nashville. My uncle Ricky is the athletic director at Ensworth. He lets me come in and borrow the wall. I don’t want a catcher. I just want to be with the wall and my bucket of balls. I start at forty feet from the wall, then back up to fifty feet, then sixty. I am there most every day, throwing for up to an hour. Some days are better than others. On the bad days, the ball feels as foreign as a hunk of volcanic rock. On the bad days, the sound of me screaming bounces off the gym walls.

  I still can’t get the feel for this pitch, I tell myself. I still don’t have any consistency with it.

  I keep throwing, and keep thinking of Larry Bird in his number 33 Boston Celtics uniform as I throw. Bird did an interview once where he talked about never letting himself be outworked, about being haunted by a fear that somebody, somewhere, was taking shots while he was resting.

  I don’t want anybody to outwork me, either. I may not make it as a big-league knuckleballer, but it won’t be from lack of effort. So I keep throwing against the cinder blocks, picking out a particular block to hit with every pitch, knowing that whatever happens, I will never regret not putting in more time. Even when I’m not in Uncle Ricky’s gym, I am working. I keep a baseball in my car and drive around Nashville with only my left hand on the wheel so I can practice my knuckleball grip with my right hand.

  When I drive our daughter Gabriel to nursery school, the ball is in my right hand.

  When I run out to get diapers or go to the bank, the ball is in my right hand.

  It’s another one of Charlie’s suggestions. There’s no substitute for having the ball in your hand. I still keep a baseball in my car. You never stop working on your grip.

  I go back to Charlie’s for a one-week refresher in early February, right before I head to Surprise, Arizona, for spring training. I am beginning to feel what he’s talking about, feel when I’ve got it right. I can tell by the friction of the ball as it leaves my fingernails, by the way it slides out of my hand. It feels almost as though the ball has an agreement with you: Okay, you throw me right, and I’m going to dance like no ball you’ve ever seen.

  You’re coming along, Charlie says. You’re starting to get it.

  I have no idea if I can make the Rangers in 2006 and make a living getting big-league hitters out with my knuckleball, but I know I’m better than I was at the end of 2005. I show up early in Surprise, a journeyman in search of a no-spin zone. I ride my bike to the park and have most of my meals at Arby’s to save money. Every day I fill up a five-gallon bucket with baseballs and go to the batting cage and throw knuckleballs into the net. Then, right before lunch, I corral Andy Hawkins, the former big-league pitcher and our Triple-A pitching coach, and throw another three or four dozen knucklers to him. Andy wasn’t a knuckleball pitcher, but he gives me helpful information about my motion, my arm angle, and the spin.

  After a few weeks, I notice he’s not catching the ball as often. I am hitting him in the knee, the groin, the stomach.

  I’m going to have to start wearing armor, he says.

  I’ve never been happier about hurting someone.

  I start a game against the Japanese national team, which is getting ready for the World Baseball Classic. I pitch well and strike out Ichiro Suzuki twice. In another start I shut down the Cubs for five innings. When I started throwing the knuckleball, I threw maybe two good ones out of ten. Now I am throwing five or six good ones out of ten.

  One afternoon, after throwing on a back field at the Rangers complex, I ride back to the clubhouse with Goose Connor, who has replaced Orel Hershiser as pitching coach. Goose is behind the wheel of a golf cart, with me riding shotgun. Like Charlie, he is not inclined to gush or give you a football-style pep talk. His encouragement is much more measured. He’s like a background vocalist: never flashy, but you sure like listening, because he’s always solid and steady.

  Keep doing what you’re doing, Goose says.

  It’s getting to be the end of camp. The Rangers of that era are not known for pitching. They’re known for having a completely stacked lineup that tries to outscore the opposition. When one of the projected starters, Adam Eaton, gets hurt in spring training, it looks as though there are at least one or two starting spots that Buck and Goose are looking to fill.

  Am I ready to be a starting pitcher as a knuckleballer? Can I help the Rangers win? My anxiety about making the club builds by the day. In my heart, I know I’m not yet where I want to be with the pitch. I also know I am getting close. The thought of going back to the RedHawks for a seventh season and hearing more chatter about running for mayor is not anything I want to dwell on. I pray for calmness and for the strength to keep working on my craft. Whatever the Rangers decide, I know God will not present me with anything I cannot handle.

  On a late March afternoon, a clubhouse guy comes over to my locker.

  Buck wants to see you in his office, he says.

  Okay, thanks. I swallow hard. The moment of truth has arrived.

  Have I shown them enough? Am I big leaguer again?

  I’m not sure what to expect.

  I walk across the clubhouse into Buck’s little office in the back of the room. Goose is there with him. I try to read their faces as I walk in the room, but they’re giving nothing away. I think again about Bird and how I have nothing to be ashamed of even if the news isn’t good.

  Buck’s blue eyes fix on me. He wastes no time with preambles.

  Congratulations, R.A., he says. You’ve worked your tail off and you’ve made the club. You are going to be in the rotation.

  I pause a minute and let it sink in. I’m not stunned, but it’s still a life-changing thing to hear.

  Thanks, Buck, I say. I really appreciate your faith in me and all the ways the club has supported me. I shake his hand and Goose’s hand and walk/float back across the clubhouse. I call Anne and my new agent, Bo McKinnis, and then I call the man who made it all possible.

  Charlie Hough.

  Hey, Charlie, this is R.A. I made the club. I just wanted to thank you again for all your help.

  Woo-hoo, Charlie says. This is Charlie’s all-purpose exclamation. Whenever I throw a good knuckleball in front of him, that’s what he always says: Woo-hoo. It’s as good as it gets from Charlie. Woo-hoo.

  We open the season against the Red Sox, at home. I am st
arting the fourth game of the year, against the Detroit Tigers. It is not only a new season. It is a fresh start, a whole new career.

  I say a prayer of thanks. I can’t wait to get on the mound.

  SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2011

  MINUTE MAID PARK, HOUSTON

  Thank you, Aaron Harang, wherever you are. I don’t mean this flippantly, or obnoxiously. I mean it sincerely. I’ve never met Aaron Harang, a pitcher for the Padres, but he gives me a lift today and doesn’t even know it. Whenever I have a rough outing—and I had a brutal one here today—I have a strange custom: I go on my laptop and surf baseball websites until I find somebody who had an even worse day than me. It’s not that I delight in other people’s misfortune; it’s just that misery does like company, and after my eighth start of the year I am definitely looking for somebody to point to and say, “Hey, this guy’s a respectable pitcher and he got lit up too.” Harang gave up nine hits and seven runs in four and a third innings against the Rockies. Today he supplies the comfort.

  I feel less miserable for knowing this.

  Against the last-place Astros, I give up six hits in the first inning, get myself into a four-run hole, and wind up seeing my record fall to 1–5 and my ERA climb to 5.08. Man, is that a stink bomb of an ERA. A complete embarrassment. I settle down after the first and use a lot of fastballs and changeups for a few innings to get back into the game, but then in the sixth I get taken out of the park by Bill Hall and a pinch hitter named Matt Downs on an 0–2 pitch. My final line is 6 innings, 11 hits, 6 runs. My worst start of the year, by far.

  If there is good news, it’s what I feel now, in my hotel room. Though I feel lonely and almost grief-stricken about the start, I can tell the feelings don’t consume me the way they once did. That is a big switch for me. It used to be that after a bad outing I’d take it out on everybody: I’d be a bad father and a bad husband and not a very good teammate, either. Now, thanks to the grace of God, I am able to keep my gaze fixed on things above. I do not get all worked up over critical media reports or bad statistics or lost games the way I once did. I passionately want to turn this season around and do well, but I truly believe that if this year doesn’t go as I’d hoped, it only means that God has something even better in store for me. What a peace of mind that knowledge gives me. I don’t know how Aaron Harang is holding up after his debacle, but after mine I am doing okay. I really am. I am already thinking about how I can’t wait for my next start. I remain unshaken in my conviction that I am better than this—much better.