Atlanta Braves R.A. Dickey and his knuckleball remains rare in our sport

What Is The Knuckleball?

You have the fastball, the curveball, splitter, changeup, slurve, palmball, the circle changup, the two-seam fastball, cutter, forkball, and oh yeah…the knuckleball.

Everyone tries to throw the knuckleball — everyone — but tries is the key word there. You throw the knuckler to your buddy warming up or a joke pitch, but it’s extremely tough to throw consistently and consistently for strikes.

A quick overview of the knuckleball pitches…it minimizes the spin on the ball while approaching the plate, making it almost impossible to tell where the ball is going to land. The ball kinda floats in the way, without any spin, and no one knows exactly where it’s going to land. It’s such a fascinating pitch!

Hitters often struggle to find a way to hit the ball and/or see where it’s going. Ever faced a knuckleball pitcher? It’s tough. But on the flip side, if you make good contact, you’ve probably hit the ball pretty hard and could have gone outta here.

Another element to it, it that most of the time, a catcher has to be dedicated to only catching the knuckleballer, along with having a bigger glove sometimes, or else there could be a lot of passed balls when the knuckleball pitcher is on the mound. AKA Mr. Tyler Flowers.

The Atlanta Braves have one of the greatest knuckleball pitchers the game has seen in recent years. Yes, over time we’ve heard about great ones, Tim Wakefield and we’ve even seen our own Phil Niekro throw the knuckleball, but it’s Dickey that’s been this decade’s greatest knuckleball pitcher.

You may ask…how does R.A. Dickey throw his knuckleball?

That’s easier said than done, as he releases the ball from between the thumb and knuckles of the index and middle fingers’ first joints. Obviously, this took Dickey many years of practice.

Some Great Knuckleball Pitchers

To think about all of the pitchers in the history of baseball, there can only be twenty-nine individuals who classify themselves as true knuckleball pitchers – those that primarily threw the knuckleball. Yes, the Braves R.A. Dickey is one of them.

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Not only is Dickey one of the few knuckleball pitchers over the course of baseball, he holds a very prestigious honor, being the only knuckleball pitcher to win the Cy Young Award when he captured that honor in 2012.

Dickey won twenty games that year and had five complete games and pitched three shutouts.

Over a fifteen year career, Dickey has compiled 120 wins, winning an average of twelve games a year.

In 2017 with the Atlanta Braves, he’s started 31 games…will start his 32nd game on Sunday…with a 10-10 record and a 4.26 ERA.

On October 29, Dickey will turn 43-years-young. The Braves do have an option in his contract to bring him back for 2018, but it’s not determined yet if they’ll sign him back. It’s also not determined yet if he wants to play another year. We’ll most likely know within the next month or so.

Knuckleball pitchers also do not get as much credit as they should, as only four of these twenty-nine pitchers are in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. However, two of them, Dickey and Tim Wakefield have good shots at one day being in Cooperstown.

Next: Braves Dickey pitches like Superman against Nats!

Will we one day see a major influx of knuckleball pitchers, or will they remain few and far between when it comes to star knuckleball pitchers? Considering it is an extremely hard pitch to throw and those coming into the big leagues care about speed, enjoy Dickey while he is still playing. And it could be for only one more game.

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