Wednesday, September 19, 2012

For Love of the Knuckleball


I have always been enamored with the idea of baseball as a metaphor for life.  One could make an argument that sports generally could serve this metaphorical role, but I don’t think it’s the same for all sport.  Baseball players, more than most, seem to recognize, and indeed even embrace, the absurdity of the game.  Baseball players don’t feel the need to make themselves into ‘warriors’ doing battle on the gridiron.  At the end of the day, they’re just ‘ballplayers’.  They play a game.  Major League ballplayers play (roughly) 162 games every single year.  They don’t pretend that any game is a matter of life-and-death.  You win some… you lose some- the nature of life.  Every player has down days, friends stumble, people let you down.  Of course, the opposite is also true: sometimes people play beyond their capabilities- everybody who has played baseball for any significant length of time has gotten to be a hero, if only for an afternoon.
 
This afternoon I was listening to an interview with R.A. Dickey (R.A. Dickey Interview), the dynamite knuckleball pitcher for the New York Mets.  By all accounts he is a great ballplayer and an exceptional human being.  Given my own academic tendencies, I was intrigued by his description of the knuckleball as a “countercultural pitch.”  While this is clearly a loaded phrase, let’s take a few minutes to unpack what it is that he might have meant by this.  The knuckleball is absolutely unusual even by baseball’s standards.  As Dickey describes, most baseball pitchers aim to throw the ball hard.  Every baseball fan has been engrossed watching some of the great fireballers.  Among those pitchers of my lifetime this list would certainly include Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, Bobby Jenks, Matt Verlander, even John Rocker.  We sit at the ballpark and love to watch the speed recorded by the radar gun pop up on the screen.  A kid’s eyes bulge as he looks at his dad and says, “Did you see that??!! 100 miles per hour!!!”  Our culture, generally, is always interested in the biggest, the strongest, and the fastest.  We love to see how hard a pitcher can throw, just like we love to see how far over the fence a hitter can knock a ball.  But the knuckleball is different.  The knuckleball doesn’t move any faster to the plate than the average high school kid can throw.  A knuckleball, on tv, barely looks like it is moving at all.  The knuckleball pitcher rejects the traditional sporting maxim that bigger/faster/stronger is always better.  Indeed, what is particularly fascinating about knuckleballers is that they equally reject the related maxim that precision is king.
 
The knuckleball is not about power, and it’s not about precision- it’s about pure and unadulterated chance. The magic of a knuckleball (say what you want about physics, I’m not entirely convinced that it is not actually magic) is that even the pitcher doesn’t know what is going to happen next.  The ball might swing left or swing right.  The ball might dip or it might drop.  The knuckler can’t possibly contain his pitch, but is left in a position of hope.  Of course, there is incredible skill involved, which is why, according to Dickey, there have only been 60-70 knuckleballers (presumably major leaguers) throughout the history of baseball.  A knuckler must have a modicum of control over his pitch, but even more so he must have faith and courage.  He has the faith to release, to allow his ‘creation/art/pitch’ into the world.  He has the courage to accept the happenings of chance.  The knuckleball is a 'countercultural' pitch precisely because it refuses to be identified by the structures of power and control which regulate the world of sport.  The knuckleball is quite literally 'counter-cultural' insofar as it draws its meaning in opposition to the status quo.  99% of pitchers try to throw as hard as possible, try to put the ball in a precise location, and try to impart unusual spins in order to control the exact trajectory of the baseball.  The knuckler, in opposition, scoffs at all of these practices.  He does not throw the ball with great velocity.  He does not even know where exactly his pitch will end up.  And, perhaps strangest of all, he rejects the very notion of spin.  R.A. Dickey expects his pitch to make no more than 1/4 of a single revolution in the 60.5 feet between himself and his catcher.  The pitcher with the courage to throw a knuckleball does so in defiance of the way things 'have always been'.  The knuckleballer sees the world differently, sees a world in which chance is a means of living, and a way of life.  

I have always been enamored with the idea of baseball as a metaphor for life.  Although I could never have been a pitcher in my baseball career (as clearly evidenced by my one and only excursion to the mound), I do think that we are all (metaphorically) pitchers in the game of life.  Of course, at various times in our life we are also catchers, shortstops, and, yes, at times even right fielders.  When, in my life, I play pitcher, I don't have the practice, the natural giftedness, or (at times) even the desire to be Nolan Ryan. As Dickey describes it, every knuckleballer comes to the art less out of desire than out of a failure-driven necessity.  The pitcher who throws a knuckleball does so with the full humility that he does not measure up to the standards set by his peers.  I'm pretty sure this is also the place where most of us live our lives.  Yet, what the knuckleball symbolizes is the strength of weakness.  The knuckleball is the ceding of (at least some) control.  As much as I'd like to think that my life is in my own hands, the stark reality is that it just isn't.  Like a knuckler, the best I can do is point in a desired direction and hope for the best.  Like a knuckleball life can dip, dive and swerve.  But, like a knuckleball, it is the dips, dives, and swerves that make life meaningful.  Life is a constant game of chance- of wishing, hoping, and striving.  While it might feel weird 'leaving my hand', I strive to embrace that chance.