Knucksie Floats Into Cooperstown
To mark Phil Niekro's induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, CNN/SI presents these classic passages from Sports Illustrated
Knucksie Hasn't Lost His Grip
Unceremoniously booted out of Atlanta, 45-year-old Phil Niekro is starring for the Yankees. Indeed, his knuckleball is dancing with the sprightliness of a polka step
by Steve Wulf
Issue date: June 4, 1984
The knuckler is such a bizarre pitch that even Niekro claims he doesn't understand it. "Nobody has ever given me a good, definite explanation as to why the ball does what it does," he says. "I've heard all about that aerodynamic stuff, and the Reynolds [Osborne, not Allie] number. [This states that a sphere with a three-inch diameter makes its maximum movement between 50 and 75 mph.] I've had people film it at 28,000 frames a second. I've had a guy do his college thesis on my knuckleball, but nobody's made me understand it.
"The thing that I feel sort of guilty about is that with every other pitch, you try to make the ball do something, spin it to make it curve or sink or sail. All I try to do is make the ball do nothing." Every once in a while, Niekro will throw the perfect knuckler, a ball with no rotation whatsoever, a ball so erratic that it "explodes," he says. "If every pitch I made was like that, every game would be a no-hitter."
Phil Niekro Sr. worked the Lorain Coal and Dock mine in Blaine, Ohio. Every
day he would go six or seven miles deep into the hills with his lunch pail, from 7 a.m. to four in the afternoon, for $2 a day. "He'd be totally black," says Phil Jr. "We'd be sitting in the driveway with our gloves, waiting for him to come home. He'd put his bucket down, and we'd play catch. Summer nights, we didn't eat till 9 p.m., and Mom and Phyllis and Joe, until he was old enough to play, would sit on the porch and watch us. Sometimes Dad was so tired he'd just fall asleep on the floor. But he always had time for us."
Phil Sr., 70, who still lives in Lansing [Ohio] with his wife of 47 years, Ivy, was quite a pitcher in his day. "He used to pitch in the Mine Workers League," says Phil Jr., "and I remember seeing and hearing accounts of him striking out 18, 19 guys in a game. He was a good first baseman, too." But one day Phil's dad threw his arm out. Another miner (and former minor league catcher), named Nick McKay, taught him the knuckleball so he could continue pitching. And Phil Sr. passed the pitch on to Phil Jr. and later, to Joe. "We had a game to try and see how many knucklers we could make each other miss," says Phil Jr.
On a bright Thursday afternoon at Shea Stadium, a man and his wife sat in Box K-6F, seats 6 and 7, behind home plate, watching the Mets play the Braves. They drank beer and ate hot dogs just like the rest of the fans. Nobody around them knew that the man in the light blue wind-breaker with the burgundy Jimmy Sturr baseball cap tilted over his eyes was none other than Phil Niekro.
It just so happened that the day after Niekro's fifth victory, his old team was playing an afternoon game, and Niekro wouldn't have to report to Yankee Stadium until 5 p.m. So he and Nancy decided to pay a visit. They got to the Braves' clubhouse just before the game. While Nancy said hello to some of the players out in the corridor, Phil slipped into the locker room.
The place lit up with happy faces and cries of "Knucksie!" Catcher Bruce Benedict and pitcher Gene Garber, two of Niekro's closer friends, made as if to dust off a stool and had him sit down. "What's the action, man, what's the action?" said Niekro, and the three of them laughed at what must have been his familiar words. He couldn't stay long, but he wished everybody well, accepted their congratulations on his great start and went upstairs.
The knuckleball pitcher and his catcher, thrown together by the mysteries of the pitch, tend to form a relationship as close as, say, two kids growing up across the street from each other in Lansing, Ohio. When the Braves' game was over that day, Benedict talked about Niekro for a while.
"I kind of miss him. No, I really miss him," Benedict said. "He represented a lot of good things for us. He was such a competitor, and I always felt we were going to win when he was out there.
"Catching that knuckleball set me apart, made me feel kind of special, and I think I became a better player because of it, and him. I would miss a couple, and he would tell me that I was just making him look good, or he'd kid me that I was getting so good at catching it that he felt he was losing his stuff.
"I'll tell you what he meant to me. I was in Omaha with my folks the day he announced he was leaving. I got on the next plane to Atlanta, went to the ball park and picked up the big glove we used. We put a lot of work in that mitt, and I wasn't about to let someone take it. I feel like carrying it around with me in a Brinks truck.
"I miss him in the pinochle games. He'd screw up the deal nine out of 10 times, Polish deals we'd call them. One time I went back with him to Lansing. He showed me the fields where he used to play ball. His mother is the best cook in the world—we had stuffed pork chops and cabbage roll. We went over to the Polish Club, and those guys put down a shot with every beer. Before I knew it, I got floppy-legged. We had a great time.
"What hurt him the most was people saying they didn't want him here any more. I saw a tape of his press conference, and I got all choked up. I mean tears were rolling down my cheeks.
"I broke my fingers three times with his knuckleballs, and I've got all sorts of aches and pains because of that pitch. But the relationship I had with him will never be touched in my baseball career."
One day in 1949 a coal miner taught his 10-year-old son how to throw a ball with no spin on it. And the ball's been dancing ever since.
|
