Cuckoo For Nick Canepa: Hoyt Wilhelm and Knuckleballs

After my initial Cuckoo For Nick Canepa post, written yesterday, the UT promptly released news that the company would begin charging customers for their on-line content produced each day. I don't know that the UT is worth a dime of my money so we'll see how this series progresses.

A couple of weeks ago Nick Canepa wrote an article about the horrible television contract with Fox and the complete lack of progress being made with Time Warner Cable to distribute Padres games to a large segment of San Diego. Definitely a topic worthy of coverage by Nick Canepa.

While the column was timely, I did take umbrage (and I was not the only one) with the following analogy by Canepa:

And things are moving along about as swiftly as a Hoyt Wilhelm knuckle ball, but with very little movement.

There is nothing swift about the speed of a knuckleball in its path to homeplate. It be slow, indeed. Nick Canepa is trying to let his readers know that the contract negotiations are moving slow and he uses something a baseball fan can relate to: The slow moving knuckleball. I get it.

Since when, though, is there a scenario where a knuckleball has "very little movement"? 

Knuckleballs move ALL over the place. They move so much that catchers can't even catch them. They move SO much that the otherwise completely useless Doug Mirabelli found gainful employment because he was the only one who could catch a Tim Wakefield knuckler. Do you even comprehend what I just said? Doug "FREAKING" Mirabelli!

Doug Mirabelli was horrible at the game of baseball but he possessed perhaps one of the rarest skill-sets in Major League Baseball: He could catch the knuckleball. Truth be told I'm pretty sure he sucked at it too, only he sucked less than every other catcher holding down a job in the league. So even the best knuckleball catcher in MLB sucked. Why? Because the knuckleball MOVES!

Let's say you don't believe me about the movement of the knuckleball. Would you believe Hall of Famer, Willie Stargell? And I quoth:

”Throwing a knuckleball for a strike is like throwing a butterfly with hiccups across the street into your neighbor’s mailbox.”

Poetic, no? Why would Pops describe the ability to throw a knuckleball for a strike in such a way? Because it moves. It moves a lot. Knuckleballs move. It is, quite simply, what they do.

We've established that a knuckleball has movement, and as such, using it to describe something that is not moving at all (TV contract discussions) demonstrates an exercise in poor judgement by the writer. But what of the reference to Hoyt Wilhelm?

Hoyt Wilhelm was a knuckleballer during the 1950s. And 60s. And early 1970s. He pitched forever and he did it so well he made it into baseball's Hall of Fame. Its what knuckleballers do. They throw FOREVER.

Wilhelm was special though. He won games starting AND closing*. He was kind of like an early Dennis Eckersley except he didn't throw sidearm and his hair wasn't perfectly feathered. He threw a knuckleball. Which moved a lot. If you call yourself a baseball fan, you should know the name and exploits of Hoyt Wilhelm. I have a 1958 Topps baseball card of Hoyt Wilhelm. I KNOW ABOUT HOYT WILHELM.

How about a more contemporary example of a knuckleballer, though? I get that Wilhelm is the hallmark for those who throw the pitch but maybe an R.A. Dickey analogy might resonate with readers.

At the time Canepa's column was written Dickey was coming off a complete game 1-hitter in which he struck out 12 batters. Using Dickey would have made Nick Canepa look like a genius. You know why? Dickey followed that performance-up with another 1-hitter and struck out 13 batters in that one!

R.A. Dickey is also old. He's 11-1. And old. He's 37. But he's 11-1!

R.A. Dickey also just had a biography released earlier this year. He's kind of had an interesting life. R.A. Dickey also climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro during the off-season. If Nick had used Dickey instead of Wilhelm he could have wrote:

 "Things are moving as swiftly as an R.A. Dickey knuckleball dancing at altitude in equatorial Africa, but with little movement."

Canepa could have even mixed in an allusion to Ernest Hemingway had he used Dickey! Ah hell, what do I know**.

*He also didn't do any of that "1 inning" save crap that is so prevalent today. Hoyt Wilhelm worked.
** I know that I wrote this pretty swiftly on account of it being old news and me having to rush Mrs. AJM to the airport. Sorry if it reads like something Nick Canepa mailed-in.

[EDITED 8:43 am in an attempt to give the appearance that I did not completely "mail it in".]