Another passing of a baseball Hall of Famer as knuckleballer Phil Niekro passes

Once again, I was saddened by another passing of a Baseball Hall of Famer, when Phil Niekro died from cancer Friday at the age of 81. And with almost seven decades on the sports beat, I again pieced together a meaningful commentary.

Now It didn’t happen often, but it happened enough, usually after I’d covered the New York Yankees home game at night and the morning would bring a phone call fromPaterson News-Hudson Dispatch Sports Editor Rick Maddock.

I still remember the words because they were almost always the same. Except on this particular day, the Yankees were off. “No game today,” said the notice outside Yankee Stadium. Of course I knew this, because it was January and spring training hadn’t even begun yet.

And so Maddock would say, Arn, “the Yankees are having a press coverage at noon.”

For what, for whom,”?  I’d ask.

“Arn”, you know they never tell you until you get there, but I think it’s about signing somebody he answered.”

Murray Cook was the club’s general manager, and he introduced the reason we were there. The Yankees had signed ole blue eyes, whose full head of light brown hair showed a slight touch of gray at the temples. His neat beige pinstriped suit blended in with a dark brown tie.

Well hello, Phil Niekro, who would be turning 45 in April and was the oldest active player in baseball. The right-hander had spent his entire baseball career in the Braves organization, both in Milwaukee and in Atlanta. Now the Bronx Bombers had a legitimate knuckleball pitcher, another first in the club’s storied history. Prior to this season, Clyde King had stepped down from the front office to be the club’s pitching coach again.

“As it stands now,” King said, “Phil will be one of our starters, and we have plans to make some moves in the bullpen, but that’s just in the talking stages.”

Sure Clyde, but what do you do now that the San Diego Padres had just signed Rich (Goose) Gossage yesterday. Wasn’t he your bullpen ace? And I assumed that southpaw starter Dave Righetti would be heading to the pen.

None of this mattered to future Hall of Famer Niekro.

“I’m very happy to be here,” he said, looking fit and trim. ” I don’t believe in the, age limit, and I don’t see anything that will keep me from pitching until I can’t pitch anymore.”

I remember Cook, with a mischievous smile, said: “The doctor we spoke to yesterday is very concerned, said he doesn’t think Phil has more than  five, six more years of pitching in him.”

Well, Niekro turned out to be a joy, a darling of the media. He was accessible, polite, honest, and a true leader in the Yankee clubhouse. He had the respect of every teammate, as well as other players in the National Pastime. A superb athlete, he had won five Golden Glove awards while with the Braves. He had been one of the National League’s better hitting hurdlers. Two years prior to this, at the ripe old age of 43, he posted a remarkable 17-4 record with the Braves.

I was now 44 and the manager and regular pitcher for our Northern New Jersey slow-pitch softball team. We had never before advanced past the first round, but now we were loaded, and after losing two of our four starts, we didn’t lose again. And every Sunday, we would play a doubleheader, and when the Yanks were home, I’d always rush to the Bronx, sometimes even changing when I got there. This brought the attention of Niekro.

Whether he was doing something, like meshing with his glove, making sure his uniform was neat or talking to the media, he first had to know how my own team did.

“How did you do,” he looked up from his chair and asked. “Did you win again and how did you pitch.”?

Of course this brought chuckles from his teammates, and the media on hand.

“We took two,” I answered. “and have now won 17 in a row and clearly on top of our division.”

Niekro then recalled the first time he inquired, when we had dropped a twin bill to theBergen Record in Hackensack, when we were so upset by this, we just answered back by romping over our other opponents. He got a kick out of this and always kept in touch as he we turned in back-to-back wins over previously unbeaten other division winning Elizabeth Journal, 11-9 on the road and 4-3 at home in Paterson to win the championship and having him lead the applauds in the clubhouse when I arrived for the night game.

He thus became one of my favorite people, making the good guys list that I referred to in my book, The Best Damn Sports Stories..

On a rainy afternoon when the Yankee game had been delayed late in the season, I asked him how he learned to throw the knuckleball. He liked that.

“Well, I was only 8 years old,” he said, “and my father showed me the pitch as well as my brother Joe, who was now pitching for the Houston Astros. Our dad was a coal minor and played in the beer baseball leagues, but after he hurt his pitching hand and couldn’t throw hard, he learned how to throw the knuckler. So I learned, too, and I guess you can say if was a hand-me-down pitch, although Joe stayed more with his curves, fastballs and change ups”

And that night when he announced my softball championship, I was kind of embarrassed and wished the Yankees were on the road at that time.

But through the years, Niekro never forgot me, sending me Merry Christmas and Happy New Year cards, and notifying me when his brother Joe had passed away after battling cancer. Now he was the seventh Hall of Famer to die this year, the others being Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Whitey Ford, Al Kaline, Joe Morgan, and Tom Seaver.

He wound up 10th all-time in career strikeouts with 3,342, and at this time the only active pitchers ahead of him were Roger Clements and Randy Johnson. One place above him was the great Walter Johnson, and he had more strikeouts than Bob Gibson, Cy Young, Warren Spahn, and Cristy Matherson, all Hall of Famers. He won 318 games in his 24-year career that finally ended at age 48 after he made his final start in 1987 after returning to the Braves. He was a five-time All-Star who had three 20-game seasons with Atlanta, and twice won the Cy Young Award.

Niekro didn’t need heat or a curve, only a knuckler, for which he owned the nickname “Knucksie.” He threw a pitch that baffled hitters and catchers, and heck, he didn’t even know where it was going most of the time.

He had a lengthy fight with cancer and his family reported he died in his sleep.