Knuckler

by Tim Wakefield

  In 1994, for example, former teammate Pete Vuckovich called Wood from Buffalo, where Vuckovich was serving as the pitching coach for the Buffalo Bisons, the Triple A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Bisons were working with a frustrated young knuckleballer searching to unlock the secrets of the knuckler, and Vuckovich wanted to know if Wood would be willing to visit with the pitcher.

  The young man's name was Tim Wakefield.

  "I was working selling pharmaceuticals at the time, and I only had two weeks of vacation," Wood recalled. "He said, 'I'd like you to come to Buffalo and work with Tim.' I said, 'Pete, that'd be great, but I only get two weeks of vacation, and my wife teaches school. I'm not sure she'd like to come to Buffalo during the summer. If you were in Florida, it would be a different situation.'"

  Alas, following a successful 11-year career as a major league pitcher—albeit a conventional one—Pete Vuckovich was on his own.

  And he had no answers for Wakefield.

  Philip Henry Niekro is that rarest of rare beings, and not solely because Niekro is in the Hall of Fame, or because he won 318 games, or because he threw a knuckleball. What makes Niekro different as much as anything else is that he essentially was a knuckleballer from conception. He did not learn the pitch as a novelty, adopt it as a way to revive a dying career, or reluctantly commit to it because he had an arm injury. Niekro learned the knuckleball the way Tiger Woods learned golf—from childhood. He is the closest thing baseball has ever had to a true knuckleballing prodigy.

  For that reason, no other knuckleballer in baseball will ever be known as "Knucksie."

  "My father was a coal miner. I have [newspaper] clippings of him from when he was 16, 17, or 18, when he used to pitch [recreationally]. He hurt his arm, and another pitcher taught him the knuckler. He taught me how to hold it, and that was it," Niekro recalled. "He really didn't know what it was or where it was going to get me.

  "When I retired in 1987, I was still trying to master it," Niekro continued. "I was still trying to figure out what it does or why it does what it does. It never does the same thing twice."

  And yet, to the extent that any pitcher has ever been able to control the knuckler and command it—to know exactly what it is going to do and when it is going to do it—nobody has had more success than Niekro.

  During a 24-year major league career that ranged from 1964 to 1987, Niekro made 716 starts (ranking fifth most all-time) and posted a 3.35 ERA, finishing four times in the top 10 of the league ERA leaders. Twelve times he finished among the top 10 pitchers in the league in wins. He went to five All-Star Games and in four seasons led the league in innings.

  Niekro was, in short, everything a knuckleballer had ever been, could be, or will be again.

  Nonetheless, as is almost always the case with any knuckleballer (or, for that matter, pitcher) who benefited from the baseball equivalent of a big break, Phil Niekro had to overcome certain obstacles during his career. He pitched through much of the minor leagues as a reliever, a role he continued after being called up to the Braves for the first time in 1964. Niekro remained in the bullpen until 1967. In the middle of that season, the Braves traded catcher, first baseman, and outfielder Gene Oliver to the Philadelphia Phillies for a colorful and defensive-minded catcher, Bob Uecker, who was nearing the end of his career. Uecker would bat just .146 in 62 games for the Braves before being released at season's end, but what he taught Phil Niekro helped launch one of the great knuckleballing careers of all time by delivering a message to Niekro that has since been delivered to scores of young pitchers seeking to establish their place in the game.

  Trust your stuff.

  In Niekro's case, that meant investing fully in the knuckleball.

  Prior to 1967, Niekro remembered, there was still a great deal of trepidation with regard to the knuckler, particularly with men on base. Managers didn't trust it. Catchers would not call for it. That all changed with Uecker, who recognized the brilliance of Niekro's knuckler and was willing to call it at anytime, all the time, no matter the circumstances and the consequences be damned. As much as anyone who ever caught Niekro, Uecker understood that everything in baseball comes with a trade-off—throwing a fastball often comes at the cost of the curve, for instance—and that the trade-off with the knuckleball could be well worth it.

  Said Niekro of his career before Uecker arrived, "There were situations where they had to take me out of games because catchers wouldn't call it in certain situations. When Uecker came over, he didn't care. He said, 'I'm going to call that pitch in situations where other guys won't.'"

  Indeed, as accomplished as Atlanta's starting catcher was at the time, he admitted to harboring a certain uneasiness when it came time to handle Niekro's knuckleball. From 1966 to 1968, Atlanta's catcher was none other than Joe Torre, who hit 252 home runs during an 18-year career and later would manage the New York Yankees to four World Series titles in five years during an accomplished run as a major league manager. But when he talked about handling the knuckler, even Torre seemed to remember the pitch as more of a headache inducer than an out producer, a sentiment shared by a range of catchers throughout history.

  Mused Torre: "Once the Braves traded for Uecker, I was off the hook."

  And Niekro, for his part, was off and running.

  After Uecker's first start with the Braves on June 9, 1967, Niekro would go on to have a 10–7 season with three saves and a 1.90 ERA in 165⅔ innings over 23 appearances (20 starts). The Braves went 15–8 anytime he threw a single pitch. Uecker allowed 25 passed balls in 59 games with the Braves—and Niekro finished as the National League leader in ERA, the only time in his 24-year career he accomplished that feat.

  From that point forward, over the final 20 years of his career, Niekro made 695 starts for the Braves—more than any pitcher in baseball—and just 44 relief appearances while winning an additional 301 games. By that point, Niekro's younger brother, Joe, looking to jump-start his fledgling major league career, had also incorporated the knuckler into his repertoire. Over the next 22 years, he would win 221 games (with 204 losses) and pitch 3,584⅓ innings, bringing the Niekro family contribution to major league baseball to an astonishing 539 vic tories and 8,988⅓ innings, the latter of which translates into 26,965 outs.

  Five years younger than his older brother, Joe Niekro had a far more traditional baseball upbringing, playing in Little League and the Colt Leagues; these opportunities had not been open to his older brother. ("My first organized game was as a freshman in high school," Phil Niekro said.) As Joe Niekro grew to be six-foot-one and roughly 200 pounds, he built a pitching arsenal around a fastball and curveball, a combination that made him a third-round selection of the Chicago Cubs in 1966. (Phil Niekro was undrafted.) Joe Niekro spent six years pitching for the Cubs, San Diego Padres, and Detroit Tigers before he turned 28 years old, at which point the Atlanta Braves claimed him off waivers and reunited him with his older brother, who did for his younger brother what Bob Uecker had done for him.

  "[Joe] was about to retire," Phil Niekro recalled. "He had been with about two or three clubs, and he said he wanted to try the knuckleball because they wouldn't let him throw it in [those other places]. I said, 'Joe, take it out of your pocket, you've got to do it.'"

  Taking his brother's advice, Niekro spent two years as a reliever with the Braves, who then sold Joe Niekro to the Houston Astros, who used the younger Niekro almost exclusively as a reliever in 1975. They began the next year shuttling Joe Niekro to and from their bullpen, but he produced the kind of results that finally forced them to make him a full-time starter. In eight seasons from 1977 to 1984, Joe Niekro went 125–92—older brother Phil went 122–105 during the same stretch—while ranking fourth in all of baseball in innings pitched (1,851), behind only four-time Cy Young Award winner Steve Carlton of the Philadelphia Phillies, his big brother (of course), and Montreal Expos right-hander Steve Rogers. In 1979, while going 21–11 with a 3.00 ERA, Joe Niekro was selected to his only All-Star Game, something his
brother accomplished five times. Traditional baseball's concerns about the knuckler reared their ugly heads at those All-Star Games.

  In their six All-Star appearances, the Niekro brothers faced just four batters, all by Phil. For all that the knuckleballing brothers accomplished during their careers, for all that the knuckleball had proven it could accomplish, there were still those who did not trust it on the grandest stages, who wanted nothing to do with a pitch that could confound pitchers and managers to the point of fear.

  With the knuckleball, after all, some level of discrimination is almost always part of the story.

  Three

  Knuckleballs suck.

  —Geno Petralli, former catcher, after a particularly

  tough night with knuckleballer Charlie Hough

  LIKE MOST PEOPLE on the receiving end of the knuckleball, Tim Wakefield initially treated the pitch with skepticism, frustration, and distrust. Neither Wakefield nor his father, Steve, remembers exactly how old Wakefield was when Steve started throwing knuckleballs to Tim and his sister, Kelly, while playing catch in the yard of their home in Melbourne, Florida, but both generally agree that Tim was probably seven or eight, maybe on the verge of starting Little League. What they also agree upon, with absolute certainty, is the way Tim reacted to the pitch that would serve as the foundation for a long and productive major league career. He despised it.

  Wakefield would come home from school or his father would return from playing softball, and the son wanted to play catch with his father. Wakefield enjoyed those times until the Norman Rockwell moment fell apart when his father began throwing the knuckleball, a pitch Wakefield found impossible to catch—which, of course, was all part of Steve Wakefield's plan.

  Dad, stop that.

  "You know, as a father, I never refused to play catch with him or even Kelly," said a chuckling Steve Wakefield, an accomplished high school sprinter who later played softball as an adult. "It's something that I felt like I had to do. I robbed my kids of a lot of things because I was so dedicated to softball, so if he 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, 'Okay, I've had enough.'"

  And so, at an early age, Tim Wakefield learned that the knuckleball could be a weapon, something used to fluster people, even make them quit.

  Had enough yet?

  By the time Wakefield began throwing knuckleballs himself as a teenager—his father, of course, had shown him the grip—the pitch had become nothing more than a toy for him, something to be played with to help pass the time. Wakefield looked at the pitch like he might have looked at a Frisbee. He admitted that, in the beginning, he saw the pitch the same way almost everyone else does—as if it were a magic trick or a party stunt. He would throw it to teammates while playing catch and getting his arm loose before games, sometimes during pregame warm-ups if he was scheduled to pitch, but almost never in competition and never with the idea that it was a real option.

  Of course, Wakefield was nowhere near the major leagues then. He was still a boy growing up in Melbourne, Florida, a city of 75,000 people located halfway up the east coast of the Florida peninsula, midway between West Palm Beach and Daytona. His father Steve worked the early shift from 3:00 to 11:00 AM, designing circuits as a draftsman for the Harris Corporation, an innovation and electronics firm that also eventually employed Wakefield's mother, Judy, as a purchaser and professional assistant. The message was clear: the Wakefields woke up every day and did their jobs, no matter what the hours were, no matter what outside influences might have been pulling at them. Mom and Dad both went to work. Everything needed to get done at one point or another, so there was no point in quibbling over petty issues, over who did what.

  Besides playing catch with his father in the backyard of their home—where the knuckleball became part of his repertoire early in life—Wakefield went to public schools as a child, and like most boys who spent mornings, afternoons, and evenings thinking about baseball, he liked to hit. He wanted to hit. It was the most enjoyable part of the game and something to look forward to. Unless he was pitching, the time he spent in the field, on defense, could be dull and seemingly endless. Many years later, Judy Wakefield still had memories of Tim going out into the yard, toting a plastic bat and ball. Standing in the back yard of the home that the Wakefields bought in 1969—and where they still reside—Tim would hit the ball over the house and into the front yard. He then would scamper around to the front, toss the ball up in the air again, and hit it over the roof and into the backyard. He would continue the practice, hitting the ball over and over—effectively playing a game of tennis with himself, albeit with the instruments he would employ throughout the rest of his life—until he got bored or tired or it got too dark.

  "Every day," Judy Wakefield said by way of describing her son's affection for the game. Baseball "was his life" even at a young age. "He played his first game at five [years old]," she recalled. "He played T-ball, and then he never stopped. I think he played every year after that. We could see in Little League [that he was advanced]. He just kept getting better."

  During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, there were no major league teams in Florida, but the state was home to some of the better college programs in the country and the weather was conducive for baseball. In the late winter and early spring, major league teams trained throughout the state. Minor league clubs were scattered about Florida, a good many of them in the Class A Florida State League, where teams sent draftees and prospects to begin playing in the earlier stages of their development. From Little League through high school and college, the baseball season in Florida was much longer than in most other parts of the country, a fact that paid obvious dividends for the boys and girls raised there who dreamed about playing outdoor sports.

  If Tim Wakefield wanted to play baseball almost every day, he could—and he did. There was nothing to prevent him from doing so. Like other boys growing up in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida—states that would produce nearly half of all professional play ers drafted or signed during the 30-year period from 1965 to 1994, the period during which Wakefield grew up—Wakefield had the advantage of endless practice time to reinforce his obsession with baseball. In short, Tim Wakefield grew up in a baseball hotbed that allowed him to develop and cultivate his talents even though, until the early 1990s, the state of Florida still lacked something that it desperately wanted, something that would further validate its place as a baseball breeding ground.

  A major league team.

  Wakefield adopted the Atlanta Braves as his team of choice, largely because the Braves were the closest major league team to Melbourne. His favorite player was Dale Murphy, the multitalented Braves slugger who won consecutive Most Valuable Player Awards in 1982 and 1983 and who had slowly matured into one of the most complete players in baseball. During his prime, Murphy was a Gold Glove outfielder and elite hitter who once stole as many as 30 bases in a season, a man whose skills were so comprehensive that he could do just about anything on a baseball diamond. Murphy had caught and played in both the infield and the outfield, he could hit for average and power, and he could run, throw, and play defense. Murphy played hard and played hurt, and his durability was legendary. During the heart of his career, an 11-year period that began in 1980 and ran through 1990, Murphy never missed more than eight games in any season, and at one point he played four consecutive seasons in which he appeared in the maximum 162 games.

  Dale Murphy, like Steve Wakefield, almost never missed a day of work.

  And like Tim Wakefield would later prove on the pitcher's mound, Murphy could contribute to his team at a number of different positions and with a number of different skills.

  That's who I want to be.

  Wakefield was a skilled athlete as a boy and teen in Melbourne, having inherited the athletic ability of his father (though Steve Wakefield never played baseball). Wakefield's sister Kelly also was
innately athletic, though she later lost interest in the game—she played softball for a time—and in sports altogether. For Wakefield, the opposite was true. With baseball in particular, there was no such thing as too much. By the time he reached his midteens, Wakefield was one of the better players at Eau Gallie High School in Melbourne, the same high school that major leaguer Prince Fielder would later attend. His previous coaches had utilized his advanced skills at two of the more important positions on the diamond: like most major leaguers in their youth, Wakefield had pitched and played shortstop. That changed some at Eau Gallie, where coach Ken Campbell started playing Wakefield at first base because the team had a better shortstop. Wakefield also continued to pitch, albeit without really using the knuckleball. He would throw the pitch while playing catch with his teammates and sometimes dared to unveil it in a game "if we were winning like 10–0 or something." The pitch was not seen by anyone, however, as something serious and was regarded more as a novelty.

  By the time he graduated from high school, Wakefield was slotted as a Division 2–caliber college talent; he had the skill, but lacked some of the size, that would have made him an elite Division 1 college player. His options were relatively limited, particularly when Brevard Community College was the only program to offer him a baseball scholarship. BCC was an established junior college baseball program in Melbourne, and enrolling there allowed Wakefield to remain close to home. The idea was that he would distinguish himself at BCC, continue to develop, and maybe transfer to a bigger college program like Miami or Tampa or Florida after his sophomore year. In the short term, the comfort of being close to home could help him, something that would prove to be true over the course of his career.

  It means something to me to be here.

  Of course, as is usually true with most anything involving the knuckleball and those with the skill to unleash it, things did not go entirely according to plan.