The Good Old Reilly

I have said before that Rick Reilly is one of my favourite writers. Meanwhile, I'm also fascinated by knuckleball pitchers in baseball. So when Reilly wrote about Tim Wakefield, the star knuckleball pitcher of the Boston Red Sox in the September 10 issue of Sports Illustrated, I just couldn't be happier. And surely enough, it's a wonderful piece of work. So I am taking the liberty to quote some of the most interesting paragraphs as follows.

"Catch as Catch Can

You say you're 41 years old and your fastball is slower than gums receding and your pitches are so wild people get hurt catching you?

Then you must be Tim Wakefield, the Red Sox righthander who gives every fettuccine-armed wannabe major league pitcher hope. His fastball is 75 mph. His curve takes 11 minutes to get home. Yet, through Sunday, he had 16 wins, and nobody in the big leagues had more ...

Wakefield's knuckler drops, doodles, flips and foozles. Some nights it does a Brazilian samba on the way to the plate. It doesn't spin, but it does just about everything else. It's like trying to hit an overcaffeinated moth.

"There are two theories on hitting a knuckleball," famed hitting instructor Charlie Lau once said. "Unfortunately, neither of them works" ...

Actually, handling a knuckleball is easy, as former catch Bob Uecker once pointed out: "Just wait till it stops rolling and pick it up."

The Red Sox have a guy on the roster - Doug Mirabelli - whose only job is to catch Wakefield, which is like saying his only job is to fill the Grand Canyon with a slotted spoon. "It's a very empty feeling to think you're squeezing the ball and then to realize it's not in there," Mirabelli says. "You panic. You jump up and start to run, but you have no idea which way to go."

Nice guy, Mirabelli. Can't hit a lick, though - .232 lifetime. Boston traded him to San Diego two years ago and gave the job to a hotshot hitter, Josh Bard. He lasted five starts with Wakefield, who went 1-4. Bard let more balls get by him than a blind goalie. The Red Sox had to go hat in hand to the Padres to get back Mirabelli for Bard; Mirabelli was hitting .182 in San Diego, and Boston still had to throw in a good reliever and 100 grand ...

In 2006, Boston signed John Flaherty as a backup catcher. His first spring training game, he caught Wakefield. The next day he retired.

As for Wakefield, it doesn't look as if he'll ever retire. He missed a start with a bad back last Friday but his arm looks like it could go on forever. Knuckleball god Hoyt Wilhelm threw the pitch until he was 49; Phil Niekro did it till he was 48. Asked if he might try to last until he's 50 - which would be his 24th season - Wakefield answers, "Why not?""

We the knuckleheads would definitely love to see Wakefield keep going and going strong. And I the Reilly lover would also definitely love to see him keep writing pieces as excellent as this one.

Which I believe he definitely will.