Baffling Batters with Butterflies

The Brothers Niekro are masters of the knuckler

The way the family tells the story, Phil Niekro Sr. was the first one to throw the knuckleball. He used the pitch to confound batters on the amateur baseball teams around the coal mines of Ohio and West Virginia where he worked. Later, he taught it to his elder son Phil, who by the age of eight could dig his fingertips into the ball and send it floating without spin toward the strike zone, dipping and zigzagging in the air currents. Younger Son Joe tried the pitch, but his hands were too small, so he concentrated on the conventional pitcher's repertory of fastball, curve and slider.

This year the right hand of Joe Niekro, 34, is plenty big enough, and he has become one of the finest knuckleball pitchers in the game. Not only did he lead the National League in wins last week (18-9), but he had helped mightily to keep the surprising Houston Astros neck and neck with the powerful Cincinnati Reds in the National League West. Fittingly, Joe Niekro's closest competitor for victories in the league is Big Brother Phil, 40, who has won 17 and lost 18 for the last-place Atlanta Braves. (He has accounted for 30% of all the games the Braves have managed to win this year.)

Phil has been throwing the knuckler ever since he came up with the Braves in 1964, a rarity since the pitch is usually mastered in desperation by aging veterans. Joe started as a fireballer who played with the Chicago Cubs in 1967, then bounced around from club to club as his fastball faded. In 1972, when he was sent to the minors, those backyard sessions finally asserted their hold: Joe perfected the knuckleball. In 1975 he joined the Astros, who now have a flutter at the pennant.

The Brothers Niekro throw the most difficult pitch to control. Once the ball leaves the hand, no one, not even the man on the mound, knows where it will end up. Gripped with the fingertips and, unlike every other pitch, thrown with a completely stiff wrist, the ball should not spin. A revolving ball slices through the air; a spinless knuckleball floats free in the breeze, its trajectory altered by every passing zephyr. A gale wind in Candlestick Park or, it would seem at times, a cough from a fan in the front row of the Astrodome can change its course, making it the hardest pitch to hit. Says Cincinnati Reds Second Baseman Joe Morgan: "The knuckleball messes up your timing so bad it can put you in a slump for three or four games." Joe Niekro, who enjoys watching himself on video tape, adds: "It's flat amazing to watch what the ball does. It's a thrill."

Phil is as astonished as his kid brother: "I've seen it start in toward the plate, a batter would swing at it, and the ball ended up going behind him." Umpire Doug Harvey recalls: "Once Phil's catcher dived full length to his right to catch a ball that looked like it was going into the dirt, and the thing came back up across the strike zone for a called third strike, then hit me in the left shoulder."

For catchers, trapping the knuckleball can be torture. Passed balls and wild pitches are common; stealing is easy because the catcher is busy netting a butterfly. Rare indeed is the knuckleball catcher who makes it through a season without injury: last month Braves Catcher Bruce Benedict dislocated a finger pursuing one of Phil's pitches and Houston's Alan Ashby is now out of the lineup with a finger fractured by one of Joe's floaters. Ashby's catching technique when Niekro is on the mound: "You just get in front of the ball and pray. It's like trying to catch a falling piece of paper."

With the Astros, Joe Niekro performs a superstitious pitching-day ritual that is bizarre even by baseball standards. Decked out in the same Levi's and black-and-white shirt, he stops on his way to the park for a cup of coffee with a friend. He insists on draping a towel around the neck of Pitching Coach Mel Wright. And then, when his team is at bat, he sits on the same towel on the same spot in the dugout.

Niekro and the Astros will need all the luck they can get trying to beat out the Reds for the division title. One of the weakest hitting teams in baseball (team average: .253), the Astros have scored only slightly more runs than their opponents (504 to 496), while the Reds, for example, have scored 90 more runs than the opposition. The Astros win with good defense and brilliant pitching. J.R. Richard, at 6 ft. 8 in. almost as intimidating as his fastball, has won 16 games and lost 12; Relief Pitcher Joe Sambito has one of the best earned-run averages in the major leagues (1.38) and 18 saves.

Atlanta's Phil Niekro, who helped his brother master the knuckler, now watches his success with wistful pleasure: "It's great that we're both having good years, but I'd like to play on a contending club, feel what it's like to go into a clubhouse every day and know you're going to be in the thick of a pennant race." The experience, Joe says, is so good it's almost like the old days in the backyard. "Pitching for me now," says Joe Niekro, "is just like going out and playing catch."

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