Word: niekro
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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...
...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...
...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...