This story was excerpted from Anthony Dicomo's Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
NEW YORK -- These days, R.A. Dickey spends most of his time on his 40-acre farm outside Nashville, where his family grows their own produce and collects their own eggs. It’s a busy life, but a quiet one away from the spotlight.
Even there, however, Dickey is frequently reminded of his past as an unexpected star of the 2010-12 Mets -- the only prominent Major League knuckleballer of the last 15 years. At home, teams and players call asking for advice on how to perfect the pitch. At his son’s high school baseball practices, teenagers clamor to show Dickey their own knucklers.
This Saturday, Dickey will break out his knuckleball once again for the Mets’ Alumni Classic game at Citi Field, which pits rosters of players from the recent past against one another. Team Shea will mostly feature alumni from the 2000s, including Mike Piazza, Carlos Delgado, José Reyes and Carlos Beltrán. Team Citi will consist of 2010s Mets, including Johan Santana, Matt Harvey and Dickey.
“I’m ecstatic to get to do something like this,” Dickey said in a telephone interview. “I can’t wait to get back and just reconnect with guys and see guys I haven’t seen in a while. Players, yes. But even clubhouse guys, the film guy, the security people underneath the stadium. … Getting to go back and see those guys, give them a hug, just talk to them for a minute, it’s going to be awesome.”
To this day, Dickey’s story remains one of the unique tales in franchise history. A first-round pick of the Rangers as a conventional pitcher in 1996, Dickey had his Draft bonus docked after doctors discovered he was missing the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. A fringy career followed, until the Mets signed him as a Minor League free agent before the 2010 season.
In Queens, Dickey blossomed as a full-time knuckleballer, following up solid seasons in 2010-11 with a Cy Young campaign in 2012. Over 34 appearances that year, Dickey went 20-6 with a 2.73 ERA, striking out 230 batters over 233 2/3 innings and making his only career All-Star Game along the way. In the first half, Dickey threw consecutive one-hitters as part of a franchise-record stretch of 32 2⁄3 straight scoreless innings.
“That two-and-a-half to three months, man, with the scoreless innings stuff, the back-to-back one-hitter stuff,” Dickey said, “all of that felt like a whirlwind.”
After the season, the Mets traded Dickey to the Blue Jays in a deal that netted them Noah Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud, two key pieces of their 2015 World Series team. Dickey, who was already 38 at the time, enjoyed several more effective seasons in Toronto and Atlanta, but nothing approaching his 2012 campaign. He retired with a 120-118 career record.
“I look back and I think, ‘God, that happened so fast. I wish I would have enjoyed it more,’” Dickey said. “But I don’t know if I would have taken the time at the time to enjoy it more, if I would have lost some of the [edge]. Those were the times in my life where I felt most in the zone, so to speak. And I didn’t want to get out of that.”
Since Dickey’s retirement, other knuckleballers have reached out to him for help, including Padres pitcher Matt Waldron and Tigers farmhand Kenny Serwa. Some have experienced various levels of success. None have even approached the level of impact Dickey made in his prime.
For Dickey, the reasons why are threefold. One is that the knuckleball, in Dickey’s eyes, is an inherently “untrustworthy” pitch, often resulting in far too many walks and wild pitches. Another is that it’s “a pitch that refuses to be measured … in an era in which everything is hyper-measured.” Finally, perfecting it “is just really, really hard to do.”
“Nobody’s out there looking for the next Hoyt Wilhelm,” Dickey said. “They’re all out there looking for [Paul] Skenes.”
On Saturday, at least, Dickey will have another chance to throw his knuckleball in front of an audience. Because he serves as pitching coach for his son’s high school team, Dickey, now 50, still tosses the ball around quite a bit. He’s eager to “throw a few knuckleballs up there for people to see.”
“If I can still get it to the plate,” Dickey quipped.