MMO Exclusive: A Conversation with R.A. Dickey

Over the sixty-plus years of New York Mets baseball, there have been individual pitching seasons that will forever be etched in the organization’s lore. Whether it’s Tom Seaver’s 1969 season, in which he won his first Cy Young Award and helped lead the club to their first World Series championship; Dwight Gooden’s otherworldly 1985 campaign at the age of 20; or Jacob deGrom’s 2018 and 2019 seasons in which he dominated the sport.

Of course, one cannot speak about the most impressive seasons on the mound by a Mets hurler without mentioning Robert Allen (R.A.) Dickey in 2012.

Dickey’s dominance that year was impressive for a host of reasons. For one, he led the National League in innings pitched with 233.2 in his age-37 season, while posting the fourth-lowest ERA among qualified starters at 2.73. He recorded back-to-back one-hitters on June 13 and June 18, a feat that had not been accomplished since Dave Stieb in 1988. And, of course, Dickey accomplished all of this while throwing a knuckleball over 85 percent of the time.

The veteran righty went 20-6 over 34 games (33 starts), recording 230 strikeouts (most in the N.L.) with a 1.053 WHIP. Along with his pair of one-hitters, Dickey tossed a franchise-record 32 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings, breaking the previous record held by Jerry Koosman.

Dickey’s durability was on full display in 2012. He tossed at least six innings in 31 of his 33 starts and went at least seven innings in 22 games. Dickey’s 27 quality starts led all starters, and his three shutouts were the most by a Mets pitcher since David Cone’s five in 1992. To further illustrate the dominance Dickey displayed, he’s one of two pitchers in Major League Baseball history (along with Randy Johnson in 2001, 2002 and 2004) who posted a season with 225 or more innings pitched, 225 or more strikeouts and a sub-2.75 ERA in his age-37 or older season.

With 27 of 32 first-place votes, Dickey took home the N.L. Cy Young Award, becoming the first knuckleball pitcher to win it. The hardware was a testament to Dickey’s resiliency, as he made a career-altering transition to a full-time knuckleball pitcher at the behest of the Texas Rangers—which included pitching coach Orel Hershiser and manager Buck Showalter—in 2005.

Dickey spent years tinkering with various mechanics both in the majors and minors, having to unlearn being a conventional pitcher. Working with the small fraternity of other knuckleball pitchers—past and present—Dickey endured to keep his professional baseball career alive. Following his tenure with the Rangers, Dickey bounced around organizations before signing a minor league pact with the Mets in December 2009.

No one could have imagined that a veteran pitching depth signing would become one of the best free-agent deals in the organization’s history.

Overall, Dickey appeared in 94 big league games with the Mets from 2010 to 2012, posting a 2.95 ERA and 10.2 fWAR. Among 33 pitchers who tossed at least 600 innings with the team, Dickey owns the third-lowest ERA, behind deGrom (2.52) and Seaver (2.57).

Dickey, 50, retired following the 2017 season with the Atlanta Braves. Just as his signature pitch moved unpredictably, so too did Dickey’s professional career. Yet, through it all, Dickey adapted and experienced a career resurgence when many others would have been waning.

I had the privilege of speaking with Dickey in February, where we discussed his transition to a knuckleballer, the knuckleball fraternity and his tenure in New York.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Dickey: It kind of depends on what stage of life I was at. Early on, Nolan Ryan was always somebody I admired. I grew up an Atlanta Braves and Chicago Cubs fan because I got TBS and WGN in the South. So I would constantly be watching their games.

Greg Maddux was a huge influence on me. Rick Sutcliffe was another favorite player. John Smoltz and that era of Braves pitchers were pretty special. That was fun to watch.

MMO: Is it true that your grandfather was the person who initially showed you a knuckleball grip?

Dickey: Yeah! When I started pitching, my grandfather whipped out an old scrapbook article where he struck out like 21 out of 22 batters in one game throwing a knuckleball. He said, “This is how I held it,” and he tried to teach it to me. At the time, I just wanted to throw as hard as I could.

I filed it away in the back of my mind and played with it as I got older. Obviously, it’s something I ended up going with full-time. But at the time, I was just having fun and being goofy with it. My grandfather introduced me to the grip and the idea of a ball not spinning and being able to pitch with it.

MMO: Was that the grip you used early on with the Rangers, which they called “The Thing?”

Dickey: You know, Joe Morgan on “Sunday Night Baseball” kind of gave it that moniker; I never called it that. It was just a really hard knuckleball for me. Some people thought it was a split-hybrid, others thought it was a forkball. It was really a knuckleball that I threw as hard as I could.

I would throw one or two a game just so people would think that I had a different pitch. As I started becoming worse as a conventional pitcher, I needed a weapon I could use consistently to get big-league hitters out. My knuckleball was what ended up being the ticket.

MMO: Can you talk about the moment when the Rangers—and specifically Orel Hershiser and Buck Showalter—talked to you about transitioning to a full-time knuckleball pitcher?

Dickey: I was kind of at the end of my rope as a conventional pitcher. Hershiser watched me play catch on the side for a couple of years throwing a knuckleball and thought I had a good one. We would throw it in a game every once in a while.

They watched Tim Wakefield come in and beat us up a few times and were hopeful they could develop one of those kinds of guys. They asked me if I would be willing to do it, and they bluntly and gracefully told me what I had as a conventional pitcher probably wasn’t going to cut it anymore. I could see the writing on the wall a little bit when it came to my conventional stuff.

I committed in 2005 to go down to Triple-A and try to figure out how to be a full-time knuckleballer where I threw it 70 to 80 percent of the time. That’s when I started my knuckleball journey.

It was actually three people: Hershiser, Mark Connor, who was our bullpen coach and a really good friend, and Buck. They all agreed that they thought I could do it and gave me the runway to make mistakes with it. The front office was great with it, and Jon Daniels and John Hart were great with it.

MMO: Were there specific drills or mechanical adjustments you needed to make to train and get comfortable with the pitch?

Dickey: I was always trying to simplify. A knuckleball is the art of repeating a mechanic of if you can produce a ball that does not spin. And that’s really hard to do. You’re having to unlearn a mechanic that you have known since you were little and relearn a mechanic that can produce a ball like that.

My best knuckleball would be a ball that rotated a quarter of a revolution from the time it left my hand until the time it got to the catcher’s mitt. That took a lot of simplification of mechanics and repeatability.

Honestly, the drill work I did was just trying to figure out—over and over again against a brick wall or a cinderblock wall in a gym—whatever I could do to try and get the grip right, my mechanic right and my release point right where I didn’t have to think about it. If you have to think about it, usually it’s not going to turn out well. I wanted it to be something that I did so much with my muscle memory that when I threw it, I didn’t have to worry about it not spinning, and knew it was not going to spin. That all took repetition.

MMO: How did fellow knuckleball pitchers like Charlie Hough, Phil Niekro and Tim Wakefield aid in your development?

Dickey: They were everything. Without those guys, I would have never achieved any of the heights that I did. Charlie Hough was the first guy I ever met with when it came to trying to figure out how to do it full-time. The very first thing he did was change my grip a little. He didn’t change it a ton, but he changed it enough that it was a really good adjustment that helped me be more consistent.

After that, I got to meet with Tim Wakefield. He was so selfless with his knowledge. I’ll never forget being in Seattle playing for the Mariners; I was trying to make my way back up as a knuckleball pitcher, and I was in the bullpen. He invited me to come watch his bullpen when the Red Sox came to play. He said, “Why don’t you come watch and ask questions?”

That was a competitor, but that’s the bond between knuckleballers because it’s a very difficult thing to do. We want to perpetuate the craft of being a knuckleballer. We share whatever we have to make sure that the pitch doesn’t dissolve. And that’s what their hope was.

I think with me, they saw someone who could maybe carry the torch of being a knuckleballer. Tim poured into me; Phil Niekro poured into me. Charlie, Phil and Tim were all my Jedi Council on the knuckleball. They were all on my speed dial. I would send them a video if I was struggling, and they would help me unpack it and make corrections.

A normal pitching coach doesn’t have a ton of experience with knuckleball guys, so you have to be your own best coach. I had to know what it was like to coach myself. The only way to do that was to ask good questions to people who had done it before me, and those guys had done it well.

MMO: At what point did you become aware that you threw a hard knuckleball? Did you feel you had better control with one over the other?

Dickey: That’s a good question. For me, I could always throw a hard knuckleball. When I started my journey with the Rangers, they wanted me to kind of be like Wakefield. I felt like I had to subtract speed all the time with it. I think that wasn’t my personality with the pitch. It was difficult for me to slow it down that much and throw a high-sixties knuckleball consistently because my arm speed was such that it just would roll up there and I couldn’t get it to not spin.

It was when I did a lot of work with Hough and Niekro that they both said the same thing. They said, “You should be throwing this as hard as you’re capable of throwing it and still subtract spin.” That was an epiphany for me because I had been trying to be someone else for so long with it. My first two years, I was trying to be Tim Wakefield; I was trying to be Charlie Hough. I didn’t really realize that I needed to embrace my own personality with the pitch. My personality with the pitch was that I could throw it hard.

I was working with Niekro, and something kind of clicked when we were working together. He said, “Man, that is an angry knuckleball.” He described it as an “angry pitch.” That really stuck with me. Every knuckleball I threw from then on, I was trying to make angry. The way I made it angry was by throwing it hard.

Once I did that, I realized that I could keep it in the strike zone a lot better, and the hitter had to respect it a lot more if I was in the strike zone or off it. That was a real turning point for me.

MMO: What made the New York Mets an attractive organization to sign your minor league deal with in December 2009?

Dickey: Life’s about relationships and networking. Omar Minaya was an advocate for me. He knew my journey and felt like I could maybe be a contributor there. He sold me on the opportunity that it could be a possibility if I showed that I was consistent with the pitch and they would embrace it. And they did; they stayed true to their word.

I didn’t get a lot of opportunities in big league camp, but when I went down, I tried to make the most of it. They saw that and called me up, and the rest was history. For those three years in New York, it was some of the most fun baseball that I’ve ever played. I had such an idea on how to be consistent with the pitch. That was really what separated me from other guys.

MMO: In 2011, you posted a 15.3 percent strikeout rate. That increased to 24.8 percent in your Cy Young Award-winning season in 2012. Is there anything you can attribute to that near 10 percent increase in strikeout rate?

Dickey: I became able for a couple of years—don’t ask me why I couldn’t do it more consistently before or after—in 2012 and 2013 when I struck out a ton of guys. It was because I could throw a knuckleball that I could elevate that would seem like it was rising. That was a ball that I could manipulate in a way that just didn’t behave like the other knuckleballs would. It presented like it was going to do what it normally does, and then I could keep it elevated.

The things that helped me strike out guys were changing speeds with it, learning how to do that in the strike zone and then being able to throw a hard, elevated knuckleball that stayed on one plane and didn’t break out. It still presented like every other knuckleball that I threw, and that was a big deal! Having the feel for two years is what produced all of those strikeouts, I think.

MMO: It was like you were able to tunnel all the different variations of your knuckleball.

Dickey: I could. I had a good year in 2010, and the reason I felt like I had a good year was because I was throwing strikes with it consistently. It was an anomaly in the league; guys couldn’t prepare for it, and it was hard and I just threw strikes with it.

I induced a lot of weak contact in ’10, but not a lot of strikeouts. The ’11 season was kind of similar, but when ’12 came, I just really had a good feel for it. It was just that time in my process that I’ve been working on it for so long that I could do different things with it and become a real artist with it. Before then, I was more of a workman. I was punching the clock, and I knew what I could do, but I didn’t have a lot of artistry in what I was doing.

In ’12 and ’13, I felt like I could move it around a good bit, and it would behave the way I wanted it to. That’s hard to do with a knuckleball, which I found out from ’14 to ’17. I didn’t necessarily have the same feel as I did for that two-year period.

MMO: Did you stay consistent with your knuckleball grip, or would you tinker with it at all?

Dickey: No, I’ve kept the same grip every single time I threw a knuckleball. I would change my arm path. That’s how I could manipulate the ball in a way that was different from other knuckleballers. I learned if I could be cognizant of my arm path through my release point, I could make it do different things. I had a good feel for that for about four to five years, and those were my best years.

MMO: When you look back on that 2012 season, are there certain starts that stand out?

Dickey: I threw three one-hitters. One of the one-hitters I threw was in 2010 against the Phillies where Cole Hamels was the only hit. That, to me, was a turning point in my confidence with the pitch. It gave me a real sense that I can do this consistently. I have a weapon now that I can trust.

In ’12, I was just in a zone for a long time. I think the back-to-back one-hitters against Tampa and Baltimore were really kind of special. That whole year in general was pretty neat for me.

MMO: What was your routine for taking care of your nails to maintain the grip you wanted on the ball?

Dickey: I had a nail hardener that I used from a company that was kind of a sponsor. I had to make sure they weren’t too long because they would bend. A bend in the nail would promote spin on the ball. I wanted to take as much spin off the ball as possible.

It was all about the angle at which I filed my nails; it was important because I wanted as much surface area as I could to impact the baseball. I would play around with that in the dugout in between starts. There was a lot of attention to that just because it’s such a vital part of my pitch.

I always felt funny because I was going to be embarrassed if I had to miss a start because of a broken nail; I thought that was so weenie. [Laughs.] There were times I would crack a nail, and I would have to battle through just like a guy with an arm injury. It was bizarre, but we figured it out.

MMO: For your career, no catcher caught more of your games than Josh Thole (164). What made Thole such a strong batterymate?

Dickey: He knew what I wanted before I stepped on the rubber. There were a lot of games when he didn’t even put down a sign. He knew that I wanted to throw a fastball in, and we didn’t even have to put down a sign. The communication was great.

He had a great knack for being able to receive a knuckleball in a way that you never saw him jab at it. Most guys are taught to kind of get underneath the pitch to frame it, or get on the side of it, or catch it as it’s coming into the strike zone. And you can’t do that with a knuckleball because it breaks so sharp and late. You’ve got to let it come to you and just react.

He had great hand-eye coordination and no ego at all. He would catch all of my pens and throw with me in the outfield. Thole would do everything he could to try to be the best at it because he knew that was something I needed and depended on. He made himself really good at it. That probably helped him stay in the major leagues for a couple of years.

MMO: What was your initial reaction when you heard you were traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in the winter of 2012?

Dickey: I think my initial reaction was sadness. I loved my experience with the Mets and didn’t want to go, but I certainly understood it as an older veteran and professional and I was getting close to 40. So I was not under the illusion that the world revolved around me.

I love Sandy Alderson and thought he was a great GM. We had a great relationship, and he was always honest with me. I knew that they were shopping it around, and I knew why. It made a lot of sense to me as a business decision, but it didn’t stop the emotional reaction. I was leaving a place where I had kind of resurrected a career and shared a lot of incredible moments with incredible people and fans. It was a special time for me.

Once I got over the sadness, I was excited. The team we were trying to put together in Toronto was pretty neat. We ended up going to the playoffs two of the four years I was there. So it was great.

MMO: What are some things you’ve been up to since retiring from playing?

Dickey: I’m just being a full-time father and husband; that’s why I left the game. I didn’t leave because I couldn’t do it anymore. In my last year, I threw almost 200 innings for the Braves (190 innings in 2017). I left because it was time for me to be a father full-time. I’ve missed so much of my kids’ lives. Now I probably overcompensate; they want me to go back and play. [Laughs.] I’ve loved being a dad and being a husband to a woman who did it all herself for so long.

We have a 40-acre farm in Franklin, Tenn. I get to be involved in my community, coach my son’s high school team and be with my kids. It’s been a real blessing.

MMO: Do you help advise or teach other pitchers the knuckleball?

Dickey: Yes! I’ve been able to go to a couple of different spring trainings and work with guys who have the potential to go down that path. I talk with them about some mechanical adjustments and try to help them be consistent or equip them with something that might help them break through. That’s been really fun. I talk on Zoom or calls with different clubs about guys in their organization.

My hope is to see a couple more knuckleballers within the next five years. I don’t know if we’re going to get that, but there’s a kid in San Diego whose knuckleball I love. There are enough good potential knuckleball pitchers out there who can maybe do it. I’m hoping one of them is going to break through.

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