Author’s note: I’m sharing my platform this week with Brian Gaffney, a baseball dad and author whose story felt familiar to me. What follows below is adapted from his new book.
SCHOOL OF HARD KNUCKS: MY THREE SONS AND BASEBALL’S WILDEST PITCH will be published by Post Hill Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster on Tuesday, Sept. 29. It's a father-and-sons baseball memoir about a decade-long quest to master the knuckleball. Along the way, Brian, a self-described helicopter parent, learns how to be a better baseball dad.
Brian reached out to me after becoming a subscriber and regular reader, noting the overlap in our work. I saw it too, especially when he wondered in a recent piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal whether the baseball dream had become more his than his son’s. It’s a question a lot of us wrestle with, and one of the internal conflicts I write about.
Brian’s youngest son, Ben, is one of the few knuckleballers in the college ranks. He’s a sophomore at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, and the knuck is his primary pitch. My son Alex, a pitcher who recently turned 13, throws a knuckleball. But he’s tossed it in only one game, a handful of times, with his coach’s blessing. One of those pitches drew a huge swing and a miss, and even fooled the Perfect Game scorekeeper behind the backstop. “Was that a knuckleball?” the scorekeeper said to no one in particular. “That floated in there at 38.”
I hope you enjoy Brian’s story as much as I did. Good luck at the fields! —Tony
P.S. Huge thanks to Rawlings for sending me a custom Baseball Dad & PR Guy glove last week.
by Brian Gaffney
During the Covid lockdown of 2020 my sons got an extraordinary opportunity: personal coaching from the legendary pitching guru Tom House. House had just launched his Mustard app and was running Zoom sessions. When he learned we were a family of knuckleballers, he asked to feature them.
House was not a knuckleballer himself, but he had played with Hoyt Wilhelm and Phil and Joe Niekro on the Braves and coached Charlie Hough in Texas. I managed to connect all three of my sons to Phil Niekro, Hough, and other former big leaguers, who worked with them to master the knuckleball.
House told the Zoom group that a knuckleball was an undervalued skill.
“It’s the hardest pitch to hit in baseball because batters don’t see enough of them and it never moves the same way twice,” House said. “If you have a good knuckleball and you can throw it for a strike, you can pitch forever.”
He really liked my youngest son Ben’s knuckleball and gave him this advice:
“You’ll run into coaches who don’t like the knuckleball. But sometimes you have to try things that make you perform a little worse in the short run to get better in the long run. So if your coach has a problem with your knuckleball, tell him it’s a changeup.”
The tip came in handy when the lockdowns ended and Ben’s travel team resumed.
“Whatcha throwing?” Ben’s slightly annoyed coach asked him at the first practice.
“Knuckleballs,” said Ben, who was 14 years old back then.
“Don’t mess with that garbage,” his coach replied.
Before I’d signed up I told the guy running the program that Ben was a knuckleballer, worked on it for years, and was going to try to throw it in high school. The director watched Ben’s knuck before he took my money. So I called him after the coach shut Ben down.
“Hey, I don’t want to be ‘that dad,’” I said, “but if Ben’s coach doesn’t want him throwing knuckleballs, let me know and we’ll go elsewhere. No hard feelings.”
“No, it’s fine,” the director said. “Ben’s all good. I’ll talk to my coach.”
I don’t know if he told the coach that Ben was diligently working on a knuckleball. Maybe he just said they couldn’t afford to turn away paying customers after a pandemic. Either way, Ben stayed, and he got the start in the first game back.
“You got the balls to chuck the knuck?” I asked him.
“I’m not scared to,” he said.
Still, he threw mostly fastballs the first inning, until he struck out one of the best hitters in town with a knuckleball. The second inning he threw twelve pitches — nine knuckleballs — for three easy ground outs. One batter whiffed on a knuckleball that hit him in the crotch.
Then Ben walked a couple batters. The coach had enough. He shouted loud enough for everyone to hear, “No more knuckleballs!”
Ben kept his composure and retired the next three hitters.
We grabbed a Slurpee after the game.
“Am I mistaken, or did you still mix in some knuckleballs after the coach told you to stop?” I asked.
“Yes, you’re mistaken,” Ben said. “Those were changeups.”
Brian Gaffney is vice president of documentary programming at Fox News Media. He is the author of a new book, SCHOOL OF HARD KNUCKS: MY THREE SONS AND BASEBALL’S WILDEST PITCH, that goes on sale Tuesday, Sept. 29.
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Do you have the balls to chuck the knuck? Haha that’s awesome. Looking forward to reading Brian’s book.
One of the many reasons I love baseball. The confidence and friction kids go through