Knuckleball!

It was the Summer of 1958 in West Baltimore. We lived in an area of the city known as Hunting Ridge, although it had probably been many decades since actual hunting had happened.

Our street, Brookwood Road, did have a brook running in the woods at the end of the street, although the brook came out of a huge underground pipe that ran underneath the homes in our neighborhood.

My parents’ best friends were the Brouse Family. They lived only a few miles away in Catonsville, a western suburb of Baltimore. Summers were hot in the city and every year the Brouses would move to their summer home in Ocean City, Maryland. They would rent out their beautiful Catonsville home for the summer, and for the four summers beginning in 1958, it was to Hoyt Wilhelm, who had just signed to the pitching staff of the soon-to-be-legendary Baltimore Orioles.

We were huge Orioles fans in my household. I learned how to keep official score, and I would diligently keep track of every play as I listened to the games on WBAL radio 1190. When the games were televised, I would turn down the sound and be the 10-year old radio announcer for the games giving stats and color commentary referring to my scorecard.

It was one of the thrills of my childhood when my parents would let me tag along as they went over to the Brouse household to check up on the tenant and make sure everything was going well at the house. I knew all the ins-and-outs of the Brouse home. We would spend many days and evenings there playing out in their massive backyard, listening to their son Phillip play incredible classical pieces on the piano, and experiencing “air conditioning” for the first time in my life.

So, here we were, going to the Brouse house to visit their tenant, Hoyt Wilhelm. He was as kind and welcoming as could be. We talked about my Little League games, my love of the Orioles, my homemade broadcasts of the games, he asked me if I’d like to learn how to throw his famous “knuckleball.” I was floored. Hoyt Wilhelm invented the knuckleball. Batters would watch a ball heading straight for the strike zone and then suddenly the ball would veer off in an unpredictable direction. Orioles’ catcher Gus Triandos had to get fitted for a special oversized glove to handle Hoyt’s pitches.

Hoyt took me out into the backyard, the same one where I played with the Brouse boys, and showed me how to hold the ball. He told me to hold the ball between my thumb and my pinkie. I attempted this, but my 10-year old hand was much too small to handle the maneuver. He demonstrated how to hold the ball. He went on, “The real trick is how you release the ball. You don’t throw it, but rather, you wind up and the push it forward through the air.” He demonstrated the pitch and I was amazed at how he could hold the ball so comfortably in this odd configuration, wind up and the give it a twisting push as he released the ball sending it forward. No wonder the ball would go off in so many odd directions.

We became regular visitors to see Hoyt at the Brouse house. Their home became like a shrine to me. And although I never was able to master the Hoyt Wilhelm knuckleball, I learned how to recognize the various special pitches during my youthful self-broadcasts of Baltimore Oriole baseball games.