MIKE PERCIACCANTE
KNUCKLEBALL! , the fascinating new documentary that recounts the 2011 season of the last two professional knuckleball pitchers in Major League Baseball features the last season of 17-year Red Sox veteran Tim Wakefield, as well as NY Mets up and comer, R.A. Dickey. Setting KNUCKLEBALL! apart is human element, tackled by directors Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, who also brought us the recent Emmy-nominated “Joan Rivers- A Piece of Work.”
At the MLB FanCave in New York City recently, both directors sat down with members of the press, along with Tim Wakefield, R.A. Dickey, and Hall of Famer Phil Niekro, to field questions about this riveting film.
“You know, we were handed a treatment for the film by Christine Schomer who grew up a huge baseball fan and she co-wrote it with Dan Cogan,” said Stern talking about the inception of the film. “And they said, ‘What do you think about a film about the knuckleball?’ So I read the treatment and I called Annie and I said, you should read this, I think it could be a great story. Mainly, focusing on the characters because these guys have such interesting lives and universally, they have a similar kind of overcoming obstacles and pursuing their dreams and perseverance that we thought everyone could relate to. So we were really attracted to that and sort of the metaphor of the knuckleball, that it had a greater meaning and a poetry to it as a pitch and that’s an undying art. So I think those were all the things that came together and very quickly, like 3 days later, we flew to spring training and met R.A. and you know… he’s R.A. Hard not to fall in love with R.A. He’s just terrifically open, which is great for a main character and then our producers met with Tim and he was really on board so it happened very , very quickly after that.”
KNUCKLEBALL! deftly balances some key elements: the history of the knuckleball as a pitch itself, which some consider to be more a circus trick than a skill; the mesmerizing career paths of both Wakefield and Dickey: the emotional roller coaster of the 2011 season, and the family lives of the players being featured.
Wakefield’s path began as a first basemen and he turned into a pitcher when management dictated that was his next step.
“I don’t know. I had to,” he said. “I didn’t have a choice, basically. I pitched a little bit in high school so I knew how to pitch but throwing a knuckleball, you know, was something that I played around with as a kid and I knew how to throw it but actually for them to come tell me, hey, you’re going to be a pitcher now, was like I just adapted and learned how to do it.”
“Survival.” Wakefield said, laughing.
Dickey’s journey was different, as he had always been a pitcher, but his direction shifted. Clad in jeans, a black sweater over a crisp white t-shirt, Dickey appears younger than his 37 years.
“It turned into the opposite for me, because I started out as a conventional pitcher. He (Tim) started out as a first baseman,” said Dickey holding a baseball in his hands as he answered. “I just wasn’t very good anymore and I was very mediocre and had to come to terms with that and so before I was 90 percent conventional and occasionally I’d throw a knuckleball or two. I had to reverse that. I had to feed both buckets. When I started my knuckleball path, I wasn’t very good. I was kind of a hybrid and I would have limited success. I would mostly be committed to the knuckleball. But it wasn’t until I embraced it wholeheartedly in 2007, 2008, that I really turned a corner with it and it was because I had started to throw it 80 percent, 90 percent of the time. ”
The mindset of a knuckleballer is handled elegantly in the film. Something that many fans may not have realized, being a knuckleballer can be an isolating feeling and all three pitchers agreed that being a knuckleball thrower is not necessarily in everyone.
The very spry Phil Niekro expressed the mentality behind being part of this elite club.
“Most pitchers grow up, in little league and high school and American legion and all that, and you learn the curveball, the sliders and this and that,” he said. “But to be a knuckleball pitcher, you’ve got to make the sacrifice, the commitment, that I don’t have a fastball here. I’m not even thinking fastball. I’m not thinking curve balls and change ups. I’m thinking knuckleballs, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and once I get that thing going, then I can throw this other little thing, maybe that I learned, maybe a little sinker or fastball or slider, but primarily here comes the knuckleball. I’m gonna throw it to you. I don’t care if you know it’s coming or not. I’m gonna throw it to you.”
Even with the bond of throwing knuckleballs, the pitchers themselves have to find their own style.
“I think it’s just a product of embracing who you are,” Dickey said. “I wanted to be Tim. When I first became a knuckleballer, he was the picture that I had, because he was still playing. I could watch him on TV. I get video and just saturate myself with video of him pitching, mechanically tried to be him and it worked off and on, but there was something missing. And when I met with Phil and he got me a little more athletic with my body and I realized that I had something a little bit more that was unique for me, that’s when my career took off. So I was able to take a piece from all the people that came before me that I reached out to and kind of put it all in to one, coupled with what I offered, and there’s the product. You can’t teach everybody the same way. And when I went to work with Phil, he didn’t try to make me into him. He saw what I had to offer and he saw how I could do it a little unique for me. That’s what he encouraged me to do. We all have something different to offer. “
“R.A. made a good point,” Niekro agreed. “You’ve really got to be yourself. You can’t be someone else. I mean, we’d like to throw like that, but we can’t. We all probably hold it, maybe just a little different. We throw just a little harder or slower, different arm release.”
“You know, I threw my knuckleballs hard as he did but it just never got to the plate as quick as his does,” he laughed. “ He has success that way, Tim has his success, I had mine, and my late brother Joe did it a certain way and Tom Candiotti and Charlie Hough, Hoyt Wilhelm, we all had something just a little bit different about it but inside here, we all felt the same way. This is the pitch, this is gonna get me there and I don’t care what anybody thinks about it, I’m a knuckleball pitcher.”
Wakefield and Dickey had faced off in the past, a game that stands out in Dickey’s mind.
“When I tried to do it and that’s how I kind of came up. I’ll never forget, starting against Tim as a conventional pitcher in 2003 and he gave up 2 runs and I gave up 1 and I ended up winning the game,” Dickey said. “And I remember watching him being fascinated by it and I also threw a knuckleball in that game as a conventional pitcher. I threw four of them. And three of them were balls. That I had no idea, I just wanted to give a hitter a different look but I had no idea. I had no feel for it. I remember, Manny Ramirez was the hitter and I tried to just give him a different look because he was such a good hitter and so I threw it up there and it was a ball but at least he thought in his head, oh this guy could throw it again. But I, it’s so hard to do, to try to go back and threw a great knuckeball after throwing 100 fastballs or change ups or curve balls. It requires such good hand eye co-ordination and feel and I was unable to do that and be a conventional pitcher and that was my challenge.”
Wakefield, who retired in February as the modern day record holder for most pitches thrown (172 in a game back in 1993), is proud of the resourcefulness that he brought to the game.
“I’ve battled with that my whole life,” he said. “Dealing with, alright you’re a starter for four years and you’re averaging 15 wins a year in 20 innings but you’re so versatile we’re going to put you in the bullpen for four years and then you become a yo-yo but that’s the great thing about the knuckleball is that you can bring so much versatility and durability to a pitching style. I always like to tell people that I was a pitcher and a half, you know. I was a starter but in between starts, I could always throw relief. And Phil told me that never go to the dugout without your spikes on. I would tell the manager that I’d start on a Monday and I’d go to him on Wednesday when it’s time to throw my sides and I’d go, are we shorthanded in the bullpen today because if we are I won’t throw my sides, I’ll go down to the bullpen during the game if you need an extra arm and then try to help out, so the versatility that we bring, I don’t know why more organizations don’t take a chance on that. A lot of people don’t trust it. They don’t have the patience for it.”
“It’s too logical,” Dickey concurred, deadpan.
The only current knuckleball pitcher in the MLB right now, Dickey is ending the season with 20 wins. He’s optimistic about the future of the knuckleball.
“Tim doesn’t want the pitch to go extinct,” he sadi. “I certainly don’t want the pitch to go extinct, nor do I think it will. I think I’ve got a few good years left in me and I think there’s some other guys coming up that are gonna break in and hopefully there will be a movement and you’ll see it come back like it was early on when I remember a White Sox staff, three out of four guys might have been knuckleball starters. Today everything is so geared toward velocity and strength and power pitching, you’ll have to see a real shift but I think it’s coming. ”
KNJUCKLEBALL! is showing in select cities as well as Video On Demand. Check out www.Knuckleballmovie.com for more details.
