BEFORE: Something a little different tonight - I've got a few documentaries on my watchlist, and it's high time that I started working them in. A doc on baseball makes a perfect fit here in the sports section, even if there are no actors for me to properly link to. I know a lot of baseball movies usually have cameos from major leaguers, so I guess I thought that "Trouble With the Curve" might show some real baseball players who might also pop up in this documentary, but no such luck. I could point out that Justin Timberlake was in a film called "Longshot" with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who was in "The Other Guys" with Derek Jeter, who appears tonight, but it feels like a bit of a stretch.
THE PLOT: A documentary that showcases baseball's most unpredictable pitch.
AFTER: It does seem a little odd to make a film that just focuses on one pitch, but someone saw an opportunity with one knuckleball pitcher going for his 200th game and another rising to prominence in the major leagues during the 2011 season. They got incredibly lucky because that turned out to be the final season for Tim Wakefield of the Red Sox, and in his farewell speech, he ended up mentioning the other player, R.A. Dickey of the New York Mets. (Since these are my two favorite MLB teams, I should really appreciate this film...)
It turns out that the knuckleballers consider themselves a tight-knit fraternity within baseball. They're the ones that throw the sport's most difficult, most misunderstood and perhaps hardest-to-hit pitch. They "push" the ball with their fingertips (not knuckles, so it's really a misnomer) upon release, which somehow removes all the spin from the ball - all of the other pitches use spin to put the ball in the proper place. Think about how easy it is to shoot a cue ball on a pool table, and then think about how difficult it would be to add just enough backspin so that the ball slid along the table without turning. See?
Incredibly, Wakefield was with the Red Sox for 17 seasons, which is rare for ANY player these days, let alone a knuckleball pitcher. His records include most innings pitched by a Red Sox pitcher (beating out turncoat Roger Clemens) and 2nd in all-time wins at Fenway Park. But during those 17 seasons he'd been a starter, a middle reliever, a closer, and in some stretches not used at all. Part of that may be due to the vagaries of the knuckleball, since some managers don't like turning their game over to a pitcher so unpredictable even he doesn't know where the ball's going to end up.
That's right, the pitcher doesn't know, the catcher doesn't know, and (most importantly) neither does the batter. As I understand it the batter might sometimes be able to predict a pitcher's routine, but if he's a knuckleballer, all bets are off. Which, as you might imagine, can lead to more wild pitches, more passed balls, more walks, etc. But if a pitcher can maintain some semblance of control, can also lead to more strikeouts and even one-hitters or no-hitters.
It seems like Wakefield had the good sense to peak during the ALCS games in 2003 and 2004, which of course were against the damn Yankees. One of those ended up going the Red Sox's way and the other didn't. But in 2003 he allowed just three runs over 13 innings of the ALCS, then gave up the winning home run - that's the vagaries of the knuckleball, I guess. In the 2004 ALCS, when the Sox came back from 0-3, he shined in Game 5 and threw three shutout innings of a 14-inning game. That was the year when the World Series was sort of an afterthought, and the real battle was fought in the ALCS. I've got those games on DVD, and this made me want to watch them again.
R.A. Dickey, on the other hand, portrays the nature of the knuckleball as a desperation pitch, used by pitchers who are not fastball pitchers, since a knuckleball can be thrown at only 60-70 mph, as opposed to a 95-100 mph fastball. Dickey was drafted by the Rangers in 1996, and spent 14 years bouncing around the majors and minors before signing with the Mets. He transitioned to a knuckleball pitchers sometime around 2006, as an attempt to prolong his career, Wakefield-style (or perhaps Niekro-style). After an impressive 2011 season with the Mets (the one covered by this film) he had an even better 2012, winning the Cy Young award - the first knuckleball pitcher to do so.
Which, as any defeatist Met fan knows, means he was living on borrowed time, and naturally he was traded to the Blue Jays for the 2013 season. Seems about right.
I sort of wish the film had been a little more chronological - bouncing around in time turns out to be just as annoying to me in a documentary as it is in a narrative film. Having the ability to show clips from past baseball seasons, to me, does not justify putting them in any order you want to make your point. And with the 2011 season Dickey had, why not end on the high note?
RATING: 5 out of 10 saved games
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