By John Klima
Staff Writer

The knuckleball is the patron saint of orphan pitchers.

It is baseball’s traveling cult, the pitch in the closet; the one everyone understands the least. Some pitchers consider throwing it as their primary pitch an insult to their intelligence and talent, but most aren’t above trickery and deception to extend their careers. The hard part is to control that which does not want to be controlled.

That’s what makes the knuckleball such a reflection of baseball. It’s an “I-pitch.” It’s a “me-me-me” pitch that does whatever it wants, whenever it wants. It’s sharp when it should be lazy and lazy when it should be sharp. It floats like it has a hangover, and if it’s hung over the plate, it’ll ride like it’s on the Human Growth Hormone express. The knuckleball is the one pitch that covers its own footprints. When it misbehaves, it’s difficult to retrace its steps and tell it how to change.

This is a pitch with personality, a slow and wobbly attitude that rattles inside the heads of the players who try to contain it. The knuckleball turns pitchers into zookeepers. You have to pick up after it when it misbehaves.

If the knuckleball is the patron saint of wayward careers, then former practitioners such as Tom Candiotti are its preachers.

The knuckleball remains close to Candiotti’s fingernails. He’s become one of the few people in the game that can be considered a master of the pitch. He still works with knuckleball pitchers young and old, including Tim Wakefield of the Red Sox.

Pitching coach John Farrell, Candiotti’s former teammate in Cleveland, asked Candiotti to help him straighten out Wakefield in June. All Wakefield needed was a slight turn of the wrist, from sideways to straight ahead. If only it was always that easy.

“The next day he went out and threw a four-hitter,” Candiotti said. “Thank goodness. I was saying, ‘I hope I don’t screw this guy up.’”

Wakefield, who pitched Tuesday night for the Red Sox at Angel Stadium, was 8-2 since Candiotti made that adjustment. Wakefield won his 150th game on his 41st birthday in his previous start. The only pitchers in the history of the Red Sox who have more victories are Cy Young and Roger Clemens.

“The only way you’re going to get to the big leagues as a knuckleball pitcher is to have success wherever you go,” Candiotti said. “If you’re 2-8 and you throw 96 miles per hour, somebody will take a chance. A knuckleballer has to have results, otherwise he’s not getting to the big leagues.”

There are pitchers at every level hoping they can quarantine the knuckleball. R.A. Dickey, once a first-round pick of the Rangers, is in Triple-A with the Brewers. Simon Ferrer, a former second baseman for Pepperdine, is trying to make the pitch work for him in the South Atlantic League.

Candiotti has suggestions. A knuckleball pitcher must find consistency between giving up two runs in eight innings and eight runs in two innings.

“If a knuckleball is all you throw, that’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “They need to be able to stop the running game. They need to learn how to field their position. They need to know how to pitch. You can’t just throw the knuckleball, you have to pitch with it. You have to change speeds with it.”

Controlling a knuckleball is like a manager telling a spoiled ballplayer what to do.

“The only thing I can say for young guys is that they have to win,” Candiotti said. “The problem is, I don’t care if you’re Phil Neikro or Charlie (Hough) or (Wakefield), you’re not going to be able to do it consistently. You’re going to have games where you’re just not locating.”

Before he learned what he teaches, Candiotti went back and forth between Vancouver and Milwaukee. At the age of 26, he was a 6-6 pitcher running out of options. He had thrown the knuckleball before, but in the winter of 1985, went to Puerto Rico to train himself how to make it his primary pitch.

In 1986 with the Indians, he became a 16-game winner. He pitched until 1999 and earned 151 victories and a 3.73 career ERA. He spent six years pitching for the Dodgers and visited the Stadium last week with the Arizona Diamondbacks, for whom he is a TV announcer.

He teaches the pitch, with its pitfalls and its perks, requiring patience and persistence. There is no easy formula.

“I worked with a guy this winter,” Candiotti said. “He’s got a good knuckleball, but he doesn’t know how to hold runners on, he doesn’t know how to locate. There’s a lot more to it than just throwing a knuckleball up there.”

This is one of the mysteries of the game. If it were as simple as taking the spin off the ball, throwing 65 would be the new 95.