Anyone know who invented the knuckleball? Seeing as how baseball is a pretty new sport (call it the last century and a half) there probably is someone who is remembered for coming up with the innovation of the knuckler. The pitch itself is really hard to throw. You actually grip it with your fingertips. The idea is to get it to home plate with minimal rotation - the masters of the knuckleball can throw it the full sixty feet six inches with less than one full rotation on the ball. The result is a seemingly random and dramatic “break” that can handcuff the best of big league hitters. But who the heck thought of it first, and how the heck did they come up with such a crazy pitch?
Like many things in baseball, the knuckleball evolved from several different attempts by pitchers to throw the ball so it will behave erratically. AFAIK, the knuckleball has no specific father.
However, Ed Cicotte of the Chicago White Sox is sometimes credited as being the first major leaguer to regularly throw the pitch. This was sometime around 1908 according to the Dickson Baseball Dictionary.
Keep in mind that until 1920, you could still throw a spit ball or gouge the ball up in anyway you wanted, so a knuckleball wouldn’t look as strange as other pitches.
Don’t ask me where I heard this, but I seem to recall that Hoyt Wilhelm was credited with making the knuckleball popular (don’t know whether he actually “invented” it) in an effort to keep his pitching career going after he lost his fast ball.
I have nothing to back this up, but I think there is a strong possibility that the knuckleball predates baseball.
Nearly every knuckleball pitcher starts throwing that pitch because he isn’t successful throwing the standard repetoire of pitches (fastball, curve, changeup).
A knuckleball doesn’t require a lot of arm strength, just technique, so a pitcher can throw it until he is well past 40 like Wilhelm, the Niekros, Tom Candiotti, et al.
However, there were a lot of knuckleballers before Hoyt Wilhelm.