This is what we love about sports. In one word: unpredictability. In four more words, with some baseball flavor: out of left field. And when a 37 year old withering journeyman, who nearly gave up his sputtering career in baseball to become an English teacher, turns his knuckleball into the most dominant pitch in baseball, and then tosses consecutive one-hitters to inflate his record to a major league best 11-1, its fair to call it unpredictable. Or maybe you don’t call it anything at all. Maybe you just marvel at what he’s done, celebrate its serendipity, indulge in its insanity, and hope it continues, for there really are no words for such a thing after all.
In a way, we have seen this before. It’s “The guy who nobody wanted comes back to dominate those who rejected him” storyline, and its as fascinating, and beguiling, and perplexing as always. If you’re not immediately familiar with this narrative, think Jeremy Lin, and if you’re not familiar with Jeremy Lin, come out from under your rock for a while.
But just like every day is a new one, even if its basic elements remain the same, so too is this R.A. revolution/revelation.
First of all, Dickey completely reinvented himself as a major league pitcher. So there was no Victor Cruz factor at play here, where one team finally sees the guy’s intrinsic talent and unleashes it on the rest of the league. Rather, after five futile years with the Texas Rangers, in which he limped along with a 16-19 record and earned run averages more bloated than John Kruk post-Thanksgiving, Dickey decided to make a change. Not a Jose Bautista adding a leg lift to his swing type change, but a complete rebranding of his style. Bautista was always a power hitter; a quick leg lift and a subtle top hand adjustment didn’t transform a slap-hitting pest into a homerun vending machine. But R.A. Dickey was never before a knuckleballer. He was your average fastball-slider-curve pitcher, and to be straight, he was barely average. So heeding the advice of his manager Buck Showalter, Dickey abandoned conventionality – abandoned straightness – and found dizzying success.
Not at first, of course. And here’s another differentiating point between Dickey and his seeming storyline. Even after he made the change in his approach, even after the desperation move, the last gasp effort, the “well, shit, why not?” turn toward baseball bamboozlement, he still struggled. So no, this isn’t exactly your “Dominik Hasek metamorphosing from human to octopus, refashioning the position, and earning the name ‘Dominator’” story either. Dickey’s transmutation from middling, mainstream pitcher to knuckleball virtuoso took a lot more time. After being released by the Rangers in 2006, he spent a year out of the majors, before signing with the Seattle Mariners in 08, who saw little return in their investment and quickly let him go after 14 underwhelming starts. Then the Minnesota Twins gave him a whirl, but soon dumped him back on the scrapheap after 35 ineffective outings. At this point in his career, the 34 year old Dickey had a record of 22-29 and an ERA north of 5. He was a model of mediocrity.
Then, at the urging of owner Omar Minaya, the Mets picked him up. Call Minaya a prophet. A seer. An incredibly sagacious baseball mind. Call him flat out lucky. (And that’s the one I’m going with.) Because in 2010, something within R.A. Dickey simply clicked. A light bulb flashed on – you know, one of those 500 watt, industrial sized, construction site light bulbs – and Dickey’s career took a complete 180. He started 26 games for the lowly Mets, pitched to the euphonic tune of a 2.84 ERA (good for 10th in the Majors), and had it not been for said lowly Mets, surely would have won more than 11 games. But no one was convinced, the way we are now, of his superhuman greatness. And last year, despite his earning a team-leading 3.28 ERA, did little more to promulgate his otherworldly aura. It was only a matter of time before he lost the feel for his mercurial pitch, or hitters started to see it better, or some rabid Phillies fan snuck into his house late at night and cracked each of his fingernails, one by one, in his sleep.
Turns out, it was only a matter of time before he gained a profound feel for the pitch, and hitters started to go blind at the sight of it, and that Phillies fan decided to cut him a break because he was so purely impressed with Dickey’s talents and so enamored by his story. It’s hard not to be. He’s 11-1, sporting an ERA of 2.00, leading the National League in strikeouts, and hasn’t allowed an earned run since Ralph Ellison wrote Invisible Man. But moreover, he’s a genuinely likeable guy, and how often do we get to say that about All Stars these days? He’s unassuming, he’s agreeable with the media, he’s an intellectual and an athlete, and he looks like the rest of us. Not that we hold it against Albert Pujols for looking more like a tan Hulk than a normal human, but there is something reassuring, something enabling about watching a relatively skinny, relatively old, relatively average guy do totally above-average things. But most of all, we like him because he his humble.
And that’s what the knuckleball will do to you. Every time he throws it, he is reminded of how close he came to failure. Of how he was cast aside, drowning in the vast ocean that is the minor leagues, before he latched onto the rescue line that Buck Showalter had tossed his way years ago. The knuckleball reminds him, somewhat bluntly, that nothing else worked.
So maybe this sense of humility was forced upon him. But Dickey doesn’t seem like a guy who was ever given to arrogance. His weathered face, sad twinkling eyes, and working-man’s moustache speak to someone who had to work hard to get to where is today. He was never blessed with an electric arm or divine athleticism – his path to greatness wasn’t paved with gold. But he’s got a Rare Acuity, and a Rubber Arm, and a Relentless Attitude.
And a Really Amazing knuckleball.
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