‘Knuckleball!’ documentary is pitch-perfect
[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0.3077em 0.3077em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]‘Knuckleball!’ documentary is pitch-perfect[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3077em 0.3077em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"] ‘You need the fingertips of a safecracker and the mind of a Zen Buddhist.” That’s New Yorker magazine sportswriter Roger Angell on the qualifications necessary to become a great knuckleballer, and the sweet achievement of “Knuckleball!,” Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s documentary about this quixotic pitch and the quixotic men who throw it, is that it gives both sides equal play.
The movie’s a must for baseball fans in general and Red Sox fans in particular — if nothing else, it will help remove the battery-acid taste of the season now stumbling to a close. “Knuckleball!” focuses on the 2011 season (the first three-quarters, mercifully) and the only two pitchers then in the majors who specialized in the curious art: Tim Wakefield of the Sox and R.A. Dickey of the New York Mets. One was on his way out after 17 years in Boston, while the other was seeing his career unexpectedly catching fire. Stretching out behind them stood a small line of past knuckleballers such as Jim Bouton, Phil and Joe Niekro, and Charlie Hough — the proud, the few, the ornery.
In baseball, the knuckleball is the pitch least trusted by managers, coaches, catchers, hitters — even by the men who throw it. Released at slow speeds (50 to around 80 mph) without any spin, it’s subject to flukes of wind and other variables. It represents a pitcher giving himself up to the universe; it invites philosophy by default. When it works, a batter can’t hit it. When it doesn’t, he can knock it out of the park.
Because so few professional players have made it their specialty, it’s a pitch that gets no respect: We hear the knuckleball called a trick, a freak, a “circus pitch.” The pitchers who rely on it have usually resorted to it in desperation — Wakefield early on struggled as an infielder in the minors and Dickey only perfected the knuckleball late in his career — but it’s the sort of gift that improves with a player’s age. When the film opens, Wakefield is the oldest player in the majors at 44 and has never seemed more in command.
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/2012/09/17/knuckleball-documentary-pitch-perfect/VPC5DQaiN8o66a3vlZxqWM/story.html
Sounds good! 
= new reply since forum marked as read
He threw it on his knuckles. But more recent pitchers throw it on their fingertips.
It does complicate matters.
