The Knuckleball My Father Threw
Have you ever tried to throw a baseball?
Have you ever known a time when you didn’t try to throw a baseball?
That was me.
My dad was a Yankees fan. Not the bandwagon kind—the real kind. We’d go to Old Yankee Stadium. The one that Ruth really built. Not the modern concrete bowl, but the old one, where your seat might be behind a pillar, and by the third inning you’d move up to someplace better, because back then the Yankees were going through a rough spell. Nobody minded. I didn’t. I loved baseball.
I loved watching Sparky Lyle throw to Rick Dempsey. I loved going to old-timers games—seeing Yogi Berra for real. Mickey Mantle, too. I remember his first old-timers game. He hit a home run. You’d swear he had another decade left in him. But even the greats retire. That’s just the way it is.
My dad taught me how to throw a baseball. They said he was a great pitcher back in high school. Maybe even scholarship-worthy, if not for grades—or maybe just life. He never bragged, but other people did. So I kept that in mind.
He had small hands. So do I. But he could throw the ball wherever he wanted it to go. Curveball, screwball, fastball—but most of all, a knuckleball. That was his pitch. A floating ghost of a thing. No spin. Just air and mystery. I learned it because I wanted to be like him.
I played third base in Lakewood Little League because I was the only kid who could make the throw from third to first without it bouncing. I was proud of that. Then we moved to Jackson, and I had to quit the team. The very next year, Lakewood won the Little League World Series. I’d watch Wide World of Sports, hear “the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat,” and there they were—Lakewood—jumping up and down on the screen.
“Hey,” my dad would say, “that could’ve been you.”
He was smiling, but I still felt it. That’s life, too.
When I was 11, 12, 13… I was still throwing that knuckleball. Trying out for school teams, pitching in backyards, throwing until my arm was jelly. The coaches didn’t know what to do with a kid who threw knuckleballs. One even told me to stop throwing it. Said the catcher couldn’t handle it. So I did what I was told—but that was always my pitch.
The hardest part of learning to throw a knuckleball is finding someone to catch it.
But I kept throwing.
Even as an adult, I kept throwing. Playing catch with kids in the yard, with my own son—that was my chance. I taught my son to play the same way my dad taught me. And my SON?… well, he could throw the Knickler too. He still does. He’s in his 30s now, and he still plays baseball.
One of my customers—who turned out to be a coach—took a shine to him. A coach out in Leesburg. He started giving my Son special lessons, working with him on a real field. Taught him far more than I ever could.
But the knuckleball? That was mine.
I taught him how to grip it, how to float it, how to put it where he wanted it. He still throws it. And every time I would see him do it—or he’d tell me about it later over the phone—it feels like my dad’s arm reached through mine and into his.
These days, I don’t throw much. One of my eyes is no good, so the depth perception is shot. My arm’s not what it used to be. But sometimes—just sometimes—I’ll be out with some kids, and someone will hand me a glove. I pick up the ball. My fingers just know what to do: two fingers on top, thumb underneath—don’t let the ball touch your palm—index finger off to the side.
I throw.
And when it doesn’t spin—just floats like a paper airplane—the kid on the other end says,
“Hey mister! That’s a knuckleball!”
And I smile. “Thank you.”
“Where’d you pitch?” they ask.
I’d love to say the majors. The minors. Even just varsity. But I tell the truth.
“My dad taught me.”
They nod, impressed. “Well, that was a pretty good one.”
And I always say:
“You should’ve seen his.”
And then… then I brag on my son…
The Knuckleball God Throws
I guess a reflection of what God does in our lives can come from a story like this.
Just like how the knuckleball grip became second nature to me—whether I’m holding a baseball, a tennis ball, even a marble—I believe that’s how the Word of God ought to be in our lives: not something we fake or force or twist, but something handed down so deeply that we don’t even have to think about it. It’s just how we hold it. It’s how we deliver it.
Not long ago, we were at a ballfield, and a foul ball came rolling by. I picked it up. A kid held out his glove. And without even thinking, I threw a knuckleball.
That’s just what came out. That’s what was in me.
And I think that’s a reflection of how God works, too.
When God gets a hold of us, He wants us to deal straight. Not with spin. Not with deceit. Not trying to curve His Word around people’s expectations or make it slide into approval. Paul said, “We have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully.”
We’re not supposed to grip God’s Word like a curveball.
We’re supposed to grip it like He gave it to us—solid, unchanging, and obedient. Just pick it up and deliver it the way He intended. No spin. No trick. No heat. Just faith.
We are the clay, He is the potter. And when God throws us—when He uses us in His perfect timing—He throws a knuckleball. It doesn’t spin. It doesn’t bend. But it moves.
It dips. It dances. It dodges every worldly force trying to stop it. And when it lands, it lands exactly where He purposed it to go.
Jesus told Pilate, “You would have no power over me at all except it were given from above.” That’s the same for us.
We’re moving through wind, resistance, humidity, pressure—all of it. But God already accounted for that. And when He sends us into the world, His Word will not return void. It will accomplish what He sent it to do.
So maybe the best thing I can do—the best thing any of us can do—is grip His Word the same way every time. Don’t fake it. Don’t twist it. Don’t try to control the outcome.
Just trust the grip.
Throw it with love. Throw it with truth.
And trust God to move it right where it needs to go.