PEORIA, Ariz. — The gym wall was more than a backstop for R.A. Dickey.
It represented all that was derailing his baseball career — the injuries, the ineffectiveness, the shattered dream and the doubts in his mind that he would return to the major leagues.
It was a barrier Dickey needed to break through in order to become a different kind of pitcher, but also to define what a dedicated, disciplined person he is.
Three years ago, his career with the Texas Rangers fluttering, Dickey grabbed a bag of baseballs and began his full-fledged conversion into a knuckleball pitcher.
His uncle, Ricky Bowers, is the athletic director at Ensworth High School in Nashville, and he let Dickey use the gym during the winter between the 2004 and 2005 seasons. He was there every day.
“I would throw about 100 balls a day,” Dickey said. “If there was a class, I would find an empty hall.”
He would throw ball after ball against the wall, searching for the right rotation, the perfect feel and the consistency in his mechanics.
“It’s been a pretty arduous journey,” he said
After three years of struggle that might have driven others from the game, it looks like Dickey’s journey is leading somewhere.
He’s 33 now and, after about three years of trial, error and mental anguish, Dickey has found what he’s been working so hard for.
He has pitched well at spring training with the Seattle Mariners and, barring something completely unexpected, should make the opening-day roster.
“This is the opportunity that I’m most ready for,” he said. “I’ve had opportunities that have been good but, frankly, I just wasn’t ready. I’m much more ready now.”
To reach this point, Dickey went to baseball hell and back.
The Texas Rangers drafted him in the first round in 1996 after a stellar career at the University of Tennessee, and they had agreed to an $800,000 signing bonus. Then an exam revealed he didn’t have a normal ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, the equivalent of a sports car without a drive shaft.
The 800 grand turned into a $75,000 bonus.
“A lot of people were telling him it was over because of the ligament,” said Bowers, his uncle. “But his approach was, ‘Well, I don’t need that ligament.’ Determined is the right word to describe him. I’ve been in athletics a long time and he’s as positive and determined as anyone I’ve seen.”
Dickey mixed a nice fastball with his offspeed and breaking pitches to climb through the Rangers’ minor league system, reaching the big leagues in 2003.
To keep hitters honest, he also tossed in the occasional knuckleball, throwing maybe a half-dozen in a 100-pitch outing.
When injuries knocked a few mph off Dickey’s fastball, the margin for error with his traditional stuff had become uncomfortably thin. Former Rangers pitching coach Orel Hershiser took note of the knuckleball and suggested he consider throwing it full-time.
“It’s not like I would go out and get my butt kicked every time when I threw conventionally,” Dickey said. “But my velocity had dropped. I had to either become much more fine or do something different. I decided to do something different.”
Different and emotionally painful.
Charlie Hough, the former knuckleball pitcher who was an instructor in the Rangers’ system, worked with Dickey not only on the mechanical aspect but the mental side as well.
“I didn’t know how hard it would be to do it consistently well,” Dickey said. “It’s been a real learning experience for me.”
He worked on the pitch in the offseason before the 2005 season and, after a bout with tendinitis, made four starts that September. Among them was a victory at Safeco Field, where the knuckler danced around the Mariners’ bats in the heavy marine air.
So far so good.
Less than seven months later, the pitch failed him in a historic way.
Dickey had made the Rangers’ opening-day roster in 2006 as their fourth starter, and on April 6 against the Tigers, he gave up six home runs in 31/3 innings. It tied a modern-day record for home runs allowed in one outing.
The Rangers sent him to Class AAA Oklahoma the next day.
“I’d be dishonest if I said I turned the page quickly and used it as some great tool to make me better,” Dickey said. “The truth of it was that it was sad. I had worked so hard to try to make it right and people had placed their faith in me to do it well. I felt like I let a lot of people down. I know it is unhealthy having that frame of mind and I did learn from it, but it was also real, real sad.”
Dickey doesn’t call himself an overly religious person, although he’s active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and helped organize a nonprofit organization, Honoring Thy Father, that helps school, athletic and church youth groups.
“I’m a spiritual person and I think there’s a lot of purpose behind things that are outside of my control,” he said. “There’s a divine plan that I trust in. It makes it easier to have the courage to do something new when you’re not in control. I really try to run with that.”
When the Rangers sent Dickey back to the minors, it wasn’t for a few starts to tweak the knuckleball and then bring him back up. He went down for the rest of the year to take the time necessary to learn what it really takes to be a knuckleball pitcher. Hough was his mentor.
“Charlie said, ‘Look, it took me one day to learn how to throw a knuckleball and a lifetime to learn how to throw it for strikes,’” Dickey said. “He said that about the 21/2-year period, something will probably click for you. Sure enough, it really did. About 21/2 years in, I started sinking into being a knuckleballer.”
This is where it got cerebral.
A guy doesn’t just throw a knuckleball. He becomes a knuckleball pitcher. In the process, he learns how his personality fits the pitch.
Dickey had always been a hard thrower who liked to work quickly. So many knuckleball pitchers, like Hough and Tim Wakefield, were deliberate with pitches that fluttered to the plate. Dickey tried that style and it didn’t work.
“It turned out, I was trying to be Charlie instead of being me,” Dickey said. “When I figured out how to be me, it became me.”
He threw the knuckleball harder than before and not only gained consistency, he realized how it could complement his fastball, which still was decent. He might throw 85-90 percent knuckleballs, but hitters also must respect the fastball.
“Once I realized, ‘This is who I am, I’m aggressive and I like to work quick,’ things started to change,” he said
He finished the 2006 season at Oklahoma, then became a minor league free agent and played all of 2007 with the Brewers’ Class AAA team in Nashville. His 13-6 record and 3.72 ERA earned him the Pacific Coast League pitcher of the year award.
The Twins signed him as a minor league free agent last October, but the Mariners grabbed him in the Rule 5 draft in December. Being a Rule 5 pick means Dickey must make the Mariners’ 25-man opening-day roster or be offered back to the Twins, but that’s not likely.
Because the knuckleball puts so little stress on the arm, the Mariners are enamored with Dickey’s durability. He can make a spot start one night, then pitch several innings of relief the next.
“When he changed to the harder knuckleball, he added some more life into himself,” said Mariners catcher Jamie Burke, who caught Dickey in 2006 at Oklahoma. “I really think he can do it at the next level. I’ve seen it.”
The difference now, Dickey says, is that he doesn’t throw the knuckleball and hope it misses the fat part of the bat. He throws it with confidence.
“Not every one comes out right,” he said. “But a majority of them do now and that’s a big difference.”
Dickey has researched the careers of knuckleball pitchers and found that the best achieved their greatest success between the ages of 32 and 41.
“I think there’ something to the maturity of that pitch, being mature enough to handle the ups and downs that come with it,” he said. “There’s the psychology around how to control a pitch that’s uncontrollable. The older you get, the better you are. Most guys win 100 to 100-plus games from 32-41, and I’m hoping Seattle’s on the beginning stages of that kind of career for me.
“It’s real hard to leave who you were behind and become somebody new. But every day I learn something new. That makes it exciting to come to the park every day.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com
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