The world needs knuckleballers. They are my favorite type of pitchers. This is probably the case because they throw about as fast as I can throw giving all us armchair players an "I can do that!" kind of feeling. Imagine being a hitter in 1986 and seeing 47 year old Phil Niekro on the mound. Your first thought would be, "How did my Grandfather get on the mound?" Your second thought would be "boy, did I look foolish missing those pitches by four feet". The baseball world is a better place with knuckleballers such as Tom Candiotti and Tim Wakefield around but the master of them all was Phil Niekro. Phil once won 21 games and lost 20 games in the same season! He pitched 212 innings when he was 47!! He looked like he should have been wearing sandals with black socks and shorts and living on a golf course in Florida but instead he was winning 300+ games. Here's to you Phil Niekro, the best of all the knuckleballers.
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