The dying art of the knuckleball (cont.)

Through there aren't many knuckleballers in the minors, the Red Sox have one in Charlie Zink, who is 8-2 with a 2.33 ERA at Triple-A Pawtucket. ICON SMI

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.'"