There may be no player in pro baseball who is easier to root for than the R.A. Dickey. The Mets knuckleballer continued his amazing run of dominance last night at Citi Field, becoming the first pitcher since 1988 to pitch back-to-back one-hitters. Dickey has put together five straight starts (42 2/3 innings) in which he's allowed no earned runs and struck out at least eight - an MLB record.
I was at Citi Field last night, got to saw Dickey baffle the Baltimore Orioles while striking out a career-high 13. It was a thing of beauty. After the game Dickey gave an on-field interview that was broadcast stadium-wide to adoring Mets fans, who are suddenly no-hitter crazed.
Dickey, 37, spoke with genuine humility, telling his fans that he can appreciate his success, because he's seen the other side of things. He didn't specify whether he was referring to the doldrums of baseball, or of life, because he's seen both.
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R.A. Dickey's road as a major league knuckleballer began on April 6, 2006, at which point Dickey was without a doubt the worst pitcher in baseball. After pitching four indistinguished seasons as a conventional pitcher for the Texas Rangers, Dickey's first big league start as a knuckleballer ended after he gave up six home runs in 3 1/3 innings against the Detroit Tigers. The next day he was sent to the minors and would not return to the big leagues for more than two years, as a member of the Seattle Mariners.
Dickey's Rangers manager in 2006 was the same man, Buck Showalter, who stood in the opposing dugout last night, managing the Baltimore Orioles.
"It was fairly poetic, I thought," Dickey said of pitching so well last night in front of Showalter, who first convinced Dickey to switch to the knucklball. "The last game he saw me pitch live, I gave up six home runs and tied a modern-day major league record. Only God could script a narrative like this. It's really incredible."
Those six home runs in '06 weren't the worst of it for Dickey, personally. He confessed in a memoir released earlier this year that he thought about killing himself in 2006, as he dealt with lingering trauma from being sexually abused as a child, and shame from having cheated on his wife.
As a child, Dickey had been sexually abused over an extended period of time by a female babysitter, and then once again later by a 17-year-old male. It was a secret he held onto for nearly 25 years, and did not tell his wife about until they'd been married for eight years.
"I felt dirty, I felt ashamed and alone, and I felt there was something terribly wrong with me," Dickey said.
The abuse was probably the centerpiece, but not the only part of what sounds like a wild childhood for Dickey. He writes in his memoir about closing down bar rooms with his mother when he was five, of sleeping in abandoned houses as a teen, of recklessly endangering his life swimming with alligators, and trying to swim across the Missouri River.
He credits a newfound Christian faith, the faithfulness and forgiveness of his wife and family, and Buck Showalter (who he says gave him him "the right canvas" to work on) with helping him turn the corner in his life after things really bottomed out in 2006.
Last winter, he summitted Mount Kilamanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, to raise awareness for Bombay Teen Challenge, an organization that rescues and cares for women and girls in Mumbai who are at risk of being abused and exploited. Charitable as it was, you can be sure the Mets will keep him from repeating such an adventure until after his playing days are done.
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Now, Dickey is the best pitcher in baseball, first in line for the National League Cy Young award and the likely NL starter in next month's All Star game - and guys that valuable don't go off summitting the tallest mountains in the world.
R.A. Dickey is a knuckleballer, but he's unlike any knuckleballer baseball has ever seen. All the classic knuckleballers we've seen over the 40 years - Tim Wakefield, Charlie Hough, the Niekro brothers - floated the ball towards the plate without much idea of where it was going. This led to a lot of walks and wild pitches and stolen bases, in addition to the baffled hitters. But Dickey has honed a remarkable pin-point control of his knuckler, which he throws 10-15 mph harder than his predacessors did.
And to say that he only throws one pitch, as Rays manager Joe Maddon foolishly quipped last week, is to vastly underestimate him - which is maybe why so many big league hitters look so foolish against him. Watching replays of last night's gem against the Orioles, I counted at least five distinct pitches that Dickey throws from his knuckleball grip.
He throws one that acts like a curveball, high and looping, dropping hard down and away from right handers. He throws one that acts like a hard-biting slider, starting at the bottom of the strike and dropping off the table, almost straight down, before it reaches the plate. He throws one that acts like a fading change up that looks really good to left-handers, before running elusively away from them. He throws a screwball type of pitch that acts like a curveball from a left-hander. And finally he throws a harder knuckler that he elevates. The pitch stays straight, over the plate, then at the last moment sails in on the hands of lefties.
The thing all of his pitches have in common is that, unlike other knuckleballs that dance all the way to home plate, they all have late, sharp movement just before reaching home plate, and hitters have no idea where the pitch will end up until it's far too late. And unlike other knuckleballs we've seen, Dickey knows exactly where his pitches are going - which is more than he could have said for his life, just a few years ago.
For all that Dickey's been through in life and in baseball, it doesn't appear that success is changing him one bit.
"He didn't have an ego," Showalter said of the R.A. Dickey he knew back in 2006 "He just wanted to be in a position where you could contribute to a team. He's what I call an 'eye-roller.' Every time you fight for him as the 12th pitcher on your staff, all the 'metrics' -- whatever they call all the stat guys -- would roll their eyes. 'He's fighting for Dickey again.'"
It doesn't sound like many people have fought for Dickey in his life, but at least now we can all root for him.
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