In the Red Sox clubhouse a few hours before the start of a drizzly, early-May game against the Rays, Tim Wakefield wraps his hand around a brand-new baseball and models his knuckleball grip. On television, Wakefield's grip appears claw-like and uncomfortable, but up close, it looks effortless: His hand envelopes the ball easily, fingertips lodged just below the seam, ball snug against his palm. It's a grip that has helped him to more than 170 victories and a solid, if sometimes strange, 16-year major-league career.
Since the low-velocity knuckleball is comparatively easy on the arm, Wakefield can pitch on zero days' rest when his team needs him to, and he routinely finishes among the Sox' leaders in innings pitched. He's 41 now, and could easily extend his career another six, seven, even eight years. (After pitching seven scoreless innings in a 5-0 win over Arizona on Wednesday, Wakefield is 5-5 with a 3.88 ERA this season.) Knuckleball legend Hoyt Wilhelm was one week shy of his 50th birthday when he called it quits. Phil Niekro, a.k.a. "Knucksie", pitched till he was 48. Wakefield says he'll pitch as long as he can -- even into his 50s.
"Barring injury or anything like that -- absolutely," he says.
Considering Wakefield's example (not to mention his current salary of $4 million a year), and the way the knuckleball frequently makes batters look silly, why don't more players try to learn this pitch? Why are Wakefield and Seattle's R.A. Dickey the only knuckleballers currently on a major-league roster?
It's been roughly 100 years since the knuckleball first wobbled into the sightline of a major-league hitter, and yet we're not much closer to understanding the pitch today than that first unsuspecting Dead Ball-era batter must have been, when he stepped in the box and saw it floating in his direction, spinless, hypnotic and uncertain. Indeed, almost everything about the knuckleball -- from its origins, to the best way to grip it, to its flight path, and even its future in the game -- is uncertain.
No one can say for sure who threw the first one, though pitchers Toad Ramsay and Old Hoss Radbourne delivered knuckle-like pitches as early as the 1880s. Those pitches, called "dry spitballs" or "drop curves," traveled with some velocity, and probably had more spin than a pure knuckleball, which sails toward the plate at about the national highway speed limit and (that being the only traffic law it obeys), darts this way and that, or wobbles and drops unpredictably at the last minute. Satchel Paige called it the "bat dodger." Tim McCarver said trying to hit it is like "trying to catch a butterfly with tweezers."
The first appearance of that pitch in the major leagues came in 1908, when Eddie Cicotte and Ed Summers started throwing it for the Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers, respectively. Ciccotte (pronounced SEE-COT) gripped the top of the ball with his knuckles, whereas Summers, like most of the other players who adopted the pitch, dug his nails into the cover of the ball to produce the same low-spin, high-flutter effect. Despite the fact that very few pitchers since Ciccotte have actually used their knuckles to throw the pitch, the name endures. So does the pitch, just barely.
It wasn't always that way. The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers lists 70 pure knuckleball pitchers in baseball history, adding that "literally hundreds" more have had the pitch in their arsenals. In the 1940s and '50s, by co-author Rob Neyer's estimate, "something like half the pitchers in the majors occasionally threw a knuckleball." The 1945 Washington Senators featured four knuckleball pitchers on their staff, and missed winning the American League pennant by a game and a half. (Rick Ferrell was their long-suffering catcher that year, starting 91 games, and allowing 21 passed balls. His backups, Al Evans and Mike Guerra, allowed 19, giving the Senators 40 passed balls that year. No other AL team had more than 18.)
But the flow of flutterballers gradually decreased to a trickle during the ensuing decades, and when Wakefield came up in 1992 there were only two other knuckleball pitchers in the majors, Charlie Hough and Tom Candiotti. That's roughly how it's been ever since: "Like some cult religion that barely survives," says former AL umpire Ron Luciano, "there has always been at least one but rarely more than five or six devotees throwing the knuckleball in the big leagues." After Hough retired in 1994, Dennis Springer and Steve Sparks arrived to swell the ranks to four. They were both gone by 2004, but others drifted through, including Jared Fernandez (three teams), Charlie Haeger (White Sox) and Dickey. Fernandez is out of baseball now, Haeger is back in the minors, and Dickey, before a recent win over the Mets, had been 0-3 with a 13.50 ERA in three starts for Seattle. So Wakefield essentially stands alone -- the only player with sufficient mastery of this unpredictable pitch to be an established major-league starter.
So what does it take to master the knuckleball? "I don't know if I ever did master it," says Niekro, a Hall of Famer who won 318 games with the pitch. "Even by the time I'd retired. I don't know if anyone ever masters it."
There's far more mystery surrounding the knuckleball than hard knowledge. Physicists don't even agree, exactly, on why the pitch does what it does; pitchers report that they can't see the ball's legendary darting movement -- relying on their catchers for word of how well it's dancing -- and most fans have never truly glimpsed one in all its hiccupping glory, either. Viewed from, say, the first-baseline seats, a knuckleball looks totally ordinary, like a guy playing catch.
The pitch gets its movement from the disruption of the airflow around the baseball's seams. The physics are as dizzying as the pitch itself, but suffice to say that the disrupted air causes a pressure drop along the leading seam, and the ball follows the low pressure. As the ball rotates -- slightly, slowly -- the low-pressure spot changes and the ball will shift in another direction. Several other elements enter into the process, including wake, and the Magnus Effect (a physical phenomenon where a spinning object creates a whirlpool of rotating air), but the bottom line is that the knuckleball pitcher wants about half a rotation on the ball from mound to plate, maybe one full rotation, but any more than that and the effect is ruined. You're left with a junior-high fastball spinning toward a major-league batter.
So the knuckleballer needs to muffle spin. That starts with grip. Yet there is no one way to properly grip the pitch; in fact, there are almost as many different knuckleball grips as there have been knuckleball pitchers. Wakefield uses a two-seam, two-finger grip, with his right pinky flaring off the ball on delivery. Niekro used two fingers, straddling the seam; Charlie Zink, a Red Sox prospect with Triple-A Pawtucket, also straddles the seam, Niekro-style, but uses a part-knuckle, part-fingernail grip. "I actually stick my index knuckle on the ball," he says, "and then my middle fingernail." The hybrid grip is working for him: through Thursday, Zink was 8-2 with a 2.33 ERA and a 1.01 WHIP.
The next step after killing rotation is learning to repeat your mechanics. Wakefield may look like your neighbor's dad soft-tossing at a backyard barbecue when he sends his floaters plateward, but there's much more to his delivery than meets the eye. It's not a gimmicky, trick pitch. "That's the biggest misconception," says Kevin Cash, who replaced Doug Mirabelli as Wakefield's catcher last season. "There's a lot of thought and detail that goes into what he does. He throws the knuckleball, but he's a big-league pitcher. And what he does to major-league hitters at 65 miles an hour, some guys don't have as much success doing it at 95 miles per hour."
While a conventional pitcher throwing a fastball strides toward the plate to increase leverage, and flicks his wrist at his release point to increase spin, a knuckleball pitcher shortens up his stride and keeps his wrist stiff. He also pushes his fingers out behind the ball, straight at the catcher, to kill spin. And it all has to be done just so, every time, or you risk disaster. "You can throw a fastball poorly, and if you have a good arm, it still might work," says Hough. "But a poorly thrown knuckleball never works."
With all its moving parts, and the need to repeat very specific mechanics, the knuckleball delivery lends ready comparisons to the golf swing. Both Zink and Haeger, the White Sox prospect, considered pro golf careers before committing to baseball. "Mentally, just the patience in golf and having to keep the same tempo the whole way through. That really helps you out with throwing the knuckleball," says Zink. "You can't overswing in golf, and you can't overthrow this pitch. So it goes along with what I do really well."
Wakefield adds that, as with the golf swing, there's very little margin for error in throwing the knuckleball. He talks about "going around on one," or "getting too far on the inside of one." Translation: "I'm either hooking it, or slicing it." Either mistake can produce spin, which, in turn, can produce a ball traveling "475 feet in the opposite direction," in the words of former knuckleballer Jim Bouton.
It takes a certain type to throw a high-finesse, low-velocity pitch into the teeth of major-league hitting -- when everyone knows what's coming. "You gotta be pretty calm, and yet pretty competitive," says Hough. "It's not a pitch you can muscle up on."
"You can't care what other people think of it," says Niekro. "Because I was called every name in the book out there on the mound: 'knuckle-brain,' 'pus arm.' Which was okay, because I knew they were frustrated and they didn't like it, they were having a hard time with it."
"It's gotta be somebody that has a carefree attitude," says Wakefield. "I don't mean 'carefree' like you don't care, but that you're not full of care or any less care, you're just in the middle. Where you're willing to take your lumps and not get down on yourself, because when you lose the feel of [the pitch] for a while, it can be bad. But just try to stay as even-keeled as you can."
"I know I get along with all the other knuckleballers," says Zink. "So maybe there is [a type]. We're all really laid-back. I'm guessing that's gotta help."
If the pitchers need to be laid-back, well, think of the knuckleball catchers. Take an already thankless position and, oh, quadruple the degree of difficulty of its fundamental purpose, namely catching the damn ball. Bob Uecker had a foolproof technique for catching the knuckler: "Wait'll it stops rolling, then go pick it up."
Next time you see Wakefield pitch, take a look at Cash behind the dish. He doesn't square up to Wakefield, but squats at an angle, his knees pointed toward first base. Cash says this gives his receiving hand a better range of motion because it removes one of his knees from the crash-landing area of the knuckleball. With only one knee in the center, instead of two on either side, he can move his catching hand from side to side depending on which way the ball knuckles. "The most important thing is to try to relax your hand as much as possible," he says. "And catch the ball deep, as close to your body as you can." He also uses an oversized "knuckleball mitt" provided by Wakefield. It looks more like a first basemen's glove than a traditional catcher's mitt. As unreasonable as the job may be, though, the ability to catch the knuckleball -- like the ability to throw it for strikes -- can be a ticket to the major leagues.
Which brings us back to the question of why more players don't learn the pitch. Hough has a good answer: "Why don't more guys throw 95 mph? Because it's really hard to do!" A lot of pro ballplayers break out their knuckleballs during warm-ups or downtime, but according to Zink, not many can throw one out of 10 well, just playing catch. "Then when you get on the mound," he says, "it's a whole other feeling -- and to have to throw it for strikes, consistently, is really difficult."
The casual look of the pitch disguises its degree of difficulty. Beyond that, the culture of sports has changed. How many drop-shot artists are left in tennis these days? Golf is increasingly power- (and equipment-) driven; the yardage at Augusta has increased from 6,925 yards in 1990 (and the previous 50 years) to more than 7,400 this year. Needless to say, baseball is no exception. Minor league dollars go toward developing pitchers with killer arms. The knuckleball is a finesse pitch, and a homespun (or not spun) one at that. Most guys learned it from their fathers, or taught themselves. Very few coaches can coach it. Niekro and Wakefield honed theirs for years in the backyard.
"I never played Little League, or Pony League, or T-ball," says Niekro. "My first organized game was when I was a freshman in high school. By that time I was already throwing the knuckleball, and had been throwing it in the backyard with my dad for years. No one ever told me I couldn't do it. But nowadays, what kid can go up to a high school coach and say, 'I want to be a knuckleball pitcher'? The high school coach will say, 'I don't know anything about that, I can't help you."
Knuckleball pitchers are found, or "stumbled into," in Hough's phrase, but rarely made. Wakefield started out as an infielder in the Pirates organization and was converted after one of Pittsburgh's coaches saw him fooling around with the knuckler during warm-ups. Three years later he made the big-league club, went 8-1 and beat Atlanta's Tom Glavine twice in the NLCS. Zink began as a power pitcher at Savannah College of Art and Design, of all places, where the coach was ex-Boston pitcher Luis Tiant. (Clearly the Red Sox, starting with Ciccotte in 1908, are dialed into the butterfly ball).
In 2002, a Red Sox trainer asked Zink to throw a flutterball during warm-ups. The trainer opted not to wear a mask -- a decision he regretted when Zink's first floater popped him in the eye. "He wanted to see it..." says Zink, chuckling. Zink had taught himself the pitch after watching Wakefield in the '92 playoffs.
At the moment Zink appears to be Wakefield's most likely heir apparent, but Haeger, who spent parts of 2006 and '07 in the majors, has pitched 65-plus innings at Triple-A Charlotte this season, and could yet make a return to the bigs. Cash has faced both pitchers and says, "they're definitely on the right track to throw it at the big-league level."
There are others, and rumors of others. Simon Ferrer is throwing the pitch with the Class A Modesto Nuts, a Colorado Rockies affiliate. Dickey throws a hard knuckleball and is experimenting with the slower "pure" version as he struggles to secure a place in Seattle." Sean Flaherty, a former prodigy (he threw the pitch regularly in high school), went to the University of Miami on a baseball scholarship in 2005, but has since left the program, whereabouts unknown.
It's common for end-of-an-era alarm bells to be rung when the major-league knuckling population dips so low, but it seems clear that baseball's most perplexing and charming pitch does indeed have a future. Which is a good thing, because what's not to like about the knuckleball? It's the tortoise-beating-the-hare; it's analog in a digital world; it's a curiosity -- and a seriously effective pitch. It also has a pronounced comic side: Niekro tells of striking a guy out on a pitch behind him; Zink witnessed a batter pull a ribcage muscle swinging at one of his pitches; and Wakefield once plunked Terry Steinbach with a 65 mph floater that landed "so perfectly square on the elbow that he had to come out of the game," he notes, with a grin. It's a finesse pitch and it's sly, but it's also in-your-face.
As Niekro says, "I was throwing the 'here-it-comes, the 'I'll-tell-you-it's-coming-now. Can you hit it? Go ahead and hit it.'"
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