As a kid, I remember playing catch with my Dad when he would throw peculiar pitch that didn’t spin like the others — it sort of floated in the air without spinning and seemed like it would never get to my glove. It was, of course, a knuckleball — a pitch that goes against everything that high-heat baseball pitching stands for.
Knuckleball!, a new documentary released last month in select theaters and on Video On-Demand, follows this unorthodox pitch through the lens of two of its purveyors: Tim Wakefield of the Red Sox — who made a career of the knuckleball, and former Tennessee Volunteer R.A. Dickey, who has blossomed onto the scene with the Mets in the last couple of years following a long difficult road as a conventional pitcher.
The film follows the pitch and its pitchers as a metaphor for life: You can’t control it, and once it leaves your hand, it has a mind of its own.
Watch it.