Staying Steadfast to a Wobbly Pitch

Before Thanksgiving may seem like a strange time to be thinking about baseball, but the story of R.A. Dickey, this year’s just-announced National League Cy Young Award winner, has gripped me.  I took a little detour recently from my main responsibilities (which include guiding students through more gothic horror fiction, participating in my school’s surprising move to a whole new building, looking at more houses as well as trying to follow the itinerary of a new bishop) to read Dickey’s memoir:  Wherever I Wind Up:  My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball.  A book with a title like that coming at a time like this arrives in my hands as a kind of relief, I must say.

It’s all about colliding forces, adjacencies, things coming together.  Encountering the story, for me, is kind of like stepping out from the cement hallways inside a stadium to see the green expanse of field opening up.  OK, maybe not quite as fine as that.

The guy had a spectacular season with the Mets this past summer — got 20 wins, pitched two consecutive one-hitters in June, went a whopping 44 1/3 innings without an earned run.  What may be most amazing, though, is that he’s done all of this by mastering the weirdest of pitches.  Boston Red Sox fans know all about the longevity of their beloved Tim Wakefield, that other famous knuckleballer, but his retirement this year leaves Dickey the only skilled practitioner of this strange athletic art.  It was only after some years spent languishing in the minor leagues, performing at a mediocre level with mostly fastballs and changeups, that he received a kind of ultimatum from coaches: become the guy who can do this pitch…or else.  He didn’t balk at the offer. Once he put his mind to the task, he made sure to learn whatever he could from the few available masters.

Here’s how he describes, in the book, what he hopes to get from a ball after he sets his fingernails against it:

You want it to float to the plate, rotation-free, and let the laws of entropy or aerodynamics or whatever else is in play take over from there, the air rushing around it, the seams creating a drag, the ball wobbling and wiggling and shimmying and shaking.  Or not.  Sometimes the knuckleball will be unhittable and sometimes it will be uncatchable, but rarely is it predictable.  (p. 169)

Such wonderful action verbs he pulls out here — words more often used to describe how people might move on a dance floor than how a baseball travels through the air.  You can also watch him demonstrate how he does it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFVfsbSV4mw

The effectiveness of this particular pitch depends on its unpredictability, its mysteriousness, its who-knows-where-it-will-end-up quality.  In order to achieve his level of reliable success with it, however, Dickey had to be in some ways the opposite of his weapon:  completely steadfast in the pursuit of a goal.  First he needed to trust the whole idea of the oft-maligned pitch; then he had to learn not to stray from a completely specific way of throwing it.   He says:

The key to good knuckleballing is having the same feel for the pitch, over and over and over.  That means having the same grip on the ball, the same release, the same follow-through.  If anything is off even slightly, the ball is going to rotate and your outings are going to be brief.  (p. 260)

If he could be unwavering to his pitch, maybe his pitch would waver just the way he needed it to.

Steadfastness – now there’s a concept that comes straight from the Bible.  It’s perseverance, loyalty and strength all combined.   It’s what God shows towards us, mostly, but we are urged to aspire to it as much as we are able.  Trying for it, holding steady and not giving up, is what keeping faith is all about.  In the New Testament, Paul says in an epistle, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord…” (1 Corinthians 15: 58)

For Dickey, mastering the knuckleball went hand in hand with also becoming a better man (or at least so he says).  He had to stop hiding some things about his past, work honestly on his relationship with his wife and kids, and come closer to God. In fact, he needed to change in order to become more steadfast overall.  Those crazy pitches must have some kind of power.  He doesn’t promise that he’s all set for life now, just that he’s more trustworthy and loyal and honest; trying, no doubt, to be “abounding in the work of the Lord.”

Going back to Paul’s epistle, isn’t it the middle adjective – “unmoveable” – that is the hardest part to pull off?  Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, one of the best known and perhaps most misinterpreted, definitely makes us wonder how attainable complete steadfastness — at least in love — actually is.  Would any of us who have been around the block a time or two readily agree that “love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds” or that love “is an ever-fixed mark/That looks on tempests and is never shaken”?   This sounds a little too smug to be real:  it’s one (good and right) thing for love to stay the course, quite another to expect that it remain somehow frozen in character.

For what it’s worth, I’ve tried to be steadfast in keeping up this blog through the past year (can it be?) and I’m thankful for my readers.  Happy Thanksgiving to all!