Word: niekro
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DIED. Joe Niekro, 61, right-handed pitcher whose deadly knuckleball helped him to a career 221 wins in 22 seasons and who, with his knuckleball-hurling brother Phil, famously won more games than any other pair of brothers in major league baseball history; of a brain aneurysm; in Tampa, Fla. In 1976 the longtime Houston Astro hit his only career home run--against Phil, then pitching for the Atlanta Braves...
...Phil Niekro, 46, the New York Yankees' elderly knuckle-ball pitcher, "experience after a while becomes another word for compensating, listening to your body, squeezing the maximum out of what's left. When I started, my age now would have boggled my mind. But these days I think anything's possible." Niekro lacks six victories for 300. The wise Chicago White Sox pitcher Tom Seaver, 40, got there last week. He has lost only the least of his gifts, velocity. Discussing Rose, he says, "Pitchers don't have to run, remember. Not that Pete was ever a very fast runner...
...life painted entirely by the numbers does have a certain sad cast to it. But baseball is founded on statistics, after all, and as Rose puts it wonderfully, "If you have 70-some hits against Phil Niekro, and you have 40-some hits against Joe Niekro, that's over 100 hits against the Niekro family, isn't it? One-fortieth of my hits. Who wouldn't know that? Don't you know how much money you have in the bank?" At the same time, his prized distinction is the fact that he has played in 1,916 winning games. "That...
Watching Walter Lloyd conduct a high-speed car chase or evade pursuers by diving off a bridge into the icy waters of Hamburg harbor is, if you are a gentleman of a certain age, roughly equivalent to watching Phil Niekro win his 300th game. It extends the effective life of one's youthful fantasies a few minutes more. But while stimulating that harmless activity, Target also encourages a modest re-examination of the ideological scaffolding on which the older generation erected some of its dreamwork...
...will] definitely happen during my lifetime," predicted Crotreau. Niekro agreed, saying, "the eight, nine, 10-year-old girls now will probably be the first major-league players...