Remembering Phil Niekro: 1939-2020

On the night after Christmas, less than a week before the end of this dark year, the Baseball Hall of Fame family lost yet another member when Phil Niekro passed away at the age of 81. Niekro, known as “Knucksie” for his baffling knuckleball, pitched until he was 48 years old. His 5,404 career innings pitched are the 4th most in the history of baseball and the 2nd most in the Modern Era (post-1901), behind only Walter Johnson.

Niekro is the 7th Hall of Famer to pass away in the calendar year of 2020. In April, we lost “Mr. Tiger,” Al Kaline. On the last day of August, Tom Seaver (“Tom Terrific”) passed away. Less than a week later, “The Franchise” (Lou Brock) died. Then, in early October, in a span of nine days, we lost Bob Gibson (“Hoot”), Whitey Ford (“The Chairman of the Board”), and Joe Morgan (“Little Joe”). With Niekro’s loss this weekend, the number of living Hall of Famers is now 75.

Phil’s knucklers were thrown with two overgrown fingernails, which he dug into the baseball’s seams. He essentially pushed the ball forward, never knowing exactly where the pitch would wind up. His 226 wild pitches are the second-most ever in the Modern Era (behind the notoriously wild Nolan Ryan); his 1,809 career walks are the third-most ever (behind Ryan and Steve Carlton). The uncertainty about where the ball would wind up also gave him the 11th most strikeouts in MLB history, despite the lack of a blazing fastball.

Besides the pitch that inspired his nickname, Knucksie is best known for seemingly pitching forever. The ageless right-hander pitched at a high level well into his 40’s, finishing 5th in the National League Cy Young vote at the age of 43. He was 45 when he made his 5th and final All-Star squad and was closer to his 47th birthday than his 46th when he won his 300th career game. In 1997, Niekro was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

Cooperstown Cred: Phil Niekro (SP)

• Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997 (5th year on the ballot, 80.3% of the vote)
• Milwaukee Braves (1964-65), Atlanta Braves (1966-83, 1987), New York Yankees (1984-85), Cleveland Indians (1986-87), Toronto Blue Jays (1987)
• Career: 318-274 (.537), 3.35 ERA
• Career: 115 ERA+, 97.0 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 3,342 career Strikeouts (11th most in Major League Baseball history)
• 5-time All-Star, 5-time Gold Glove Award Winner
• Top 6 in Cy Young Award vote 6 times
• Won 20 or more games 3 times
• 5,404 career Innings Pitched (2nd most all-time in Modern Era)

(cover photo: Georgia Sports Hall of Fame)

Embed from Getty Images

Phil Niekro: Before Atlanta

Philip Henry Niekro Jr. was born on April 1, 1939, in Blaine, Ohio. Four years later, Phil’s younger brother (Joe Niekro) was born. The younger Niekro brother (who also threw a knuckler) won 221 games in 22 MLB seasons. The Niekros’ combined 539 MLB victories are the most for a pair of brothers (besting the 529 for Gaylord Perry and Jim Perry).

Phil Niekro Sr. (a coal miner) played baseball in the Mine Workers League in eastern Ohio; he learned to throw a knuckler from a teammate and taught the pitch to his sons. Young Phil practiced the pitch as much as he could; one of his boyhood catchers was future NBA Hall of Famer John Havlicek. When he was a freshman in High School, Niekro had a 17-1 record, with the only loss being by a score of 1-0; the lone run was scored on a solo home run by another future baseball Hall of Famer, Bill Mazeroski. After his senior year (in 1958), he got a $500 signing bonus and $275 per month to join the Milwaukee Braves organization.

Phil spent four seasons in the minor leagues before missing the 1963 season due to a stint with the U.S. Army in Fort Knox, Kentucky. He didn’t take the year off from the mound, however, pitching for the Army team and also winter league ball in Venezuela. At the end of spring training in 1964, Phil was promoted to the big club; he made his Major League Baseball debut with the Braves at the age of 25. With his team trailing 10-0 to the San Francisco Giants (at Candlestick Park), he faced one batter (Jim Davenport) and got him to ground out into a force at 2nd base.

Niekro got off to a good start (2.70 ERA in 8 appearances) but, after two subpar outings, was sent back to the minor leagues. Niekro was back in Milwaukee in 1965. He spent the entire season with the Braves but was used sparingly; he posted a 2.89 ERA in 41 appearances (74.2 IP).

Phil Niekro: Atlanta Braves Years (1966-83)

Before the 1966 campaign, the Braves were relocated to Atlanta. At the end of May, a couple of rough outings left Phil Niekro with a 5.31 ERA and a trip back to the minors. He returned to Atlanta in August and posted a 3.30 ERA in 15 appearances to finish the season.

When Niekro turned 28 on April 1, 1967, baseball fans could be excused if they didn’t envision a Cooperstown plaque with his visage on it 30 years in the future. He was back in the Braves bullpen to start the ’67 campaign and got off to a brilliant start, logging a 1.73 ERA in his first 24 appearances (41.2 IP). Thanks to those superior efforts, Phil was promoted to the starting rotation and immediately impressed by tossing a 3-hit shutout for a 1-0 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium. Knucksie maintained his sterling form for the balance of the campaign. He finished the season with an 11-9 record and a sparkling 1.87 ERA, which was the best in all of Major League Baseball.

After a solid 1968 (14-12, 2.59 ERA), Niekro had a breakout campaign in 1969, going 23-13 with a 2.56 ERA. He made his first All-Star team and finished 2nd to Seaver of the New York Mets in the Cy Young voting. It was during the ’69 campaign that The Sporting News conferred the nickname “Knucksie” to the 30-year old knuckleballer. With Niekro leading the pitching staff and Hank Aaron leading the offense, the Braves won the first-ever N.L. West title with 93 victories.

Knucksie and Tom Terrific were matched up in Game 1 of the first-ever National League Championship Series. Neither was at their best;  Niekro and the Braves had a 5-4 lead after 7 innings after Aaron broke a 4-4 tie with a solo home run in the bottom of the 7th. The Mets rallied off Niekro, however, for 5 runs in the top of the 8th to take a 9-5 lead. The Mets won that game and the series in a 3-game sweep.

Phil Niekro’s 12-Year Record of Excellence

After that partially successful 1969 campaign, the Braves went through a 12-year stretch of misery in which they posted only 3 winning records and won more than 82 games only once. Niekro had an off-year in 1970 (12-18, 4.27 ERA) but, in the 12 years that followed, was one of the top pitchers in all of baseball.

WP Table Builder

By the modern metric of Wins Above Replacement, Niekro was the best pitcher in the game for these 12 campaigns. His 70.6 WAR was 4.5 “Wins” better than Seaver’s 66.1. In terms of real wins, his 191 victories (for mostly bad teams) were the 4th most, behind only Hall of Famers Steve Carlton, Jim Palmer, and Don Sutton, all of whom pitched for teams that were often division winners. No other hurler tossed more than Phil’s 3,300 IP during these 12 seasons.

Here are some of the highlights from those 12 campaigns, culminating with the Braves’ return to the postseason in 1982 as champions of the N.L. West:

• On August 13, 1973, Niekro pitched a no-hitter in front of the home fans at Fulton-County Stadium; it was a 9-0 victory against the San Diego Padres. He recorded the final out on a ground ball to third base by future Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston.
• A couple of days after the no-no, Phil got a congratulatory present when his younger brother Joe was claimed by the Braves off waivers from the Detroit Tigers. Reunited with his brother, Joe re-learned the knuckler. Although he didn’t pitch much for Atlanta (in 1973 and ’74), the younger Niekro became a solid middle-of-the-rotation starter for the Houston Astros from 1975-85.
• In 1974, Niekro tossed a 4-hit shutout (again, against San Diego) with a career-high 13 strikeouts in his 4th start of the season. He finished the season with an N.L.-best 20 wins and finished 3rd in the Cy Young vote behind the Dodgers’ Mike Marshall and Andy Messersmith.
• Phil led the majors in games started in each year from 1977 to 1980. As a result, pitching for a bad team, he led all MLB in losses each season as well. He still managed to win 71 games during those campaigns and had the (somewhat dubious) distinction of being the first N.L. hurler to win and lose 20 games in a single campaign since 1905.
• Niekro finished 6th in the Cy Young vote in both 1978 and 1979 and won the first 2 of his 5 Gold Gloves.

Embed from Getty Images

1982: Return to October

Phil Niekro had the privilege of pitching for two future Hall of Fame managers during his 21 years with the Braves. From 1978-81, a young skipper named Bobby Cox was at the helm. After Cox was let go after the ’81 campaign, Niekro (who had become close to Braves’ owner Ted Turner) was a candidate for the job but, ultimately, Turner hired Knucksie’s former teammate Joe Torre.

The Braves got off to a 13-0 start under Torre but Niekro missed those games due to injury. Upon his return, Knucksie reclaimed his spot as the team’s #1 starter, even at the age of 43. With the benefit of 5.3 runs of support per game, Niekro went 17-4 to lead all qualified MLB starters with a .810 winning percentage. He finished 5th in the Cy Young vote (behind Carlton, Steve Rogers, Bruce Sutter, and Fernando Valenzuela).

Behind Knucksie’s 17 wins and the first of back-to-back MVP campaigns by Dale Murphy, the Braves won the N.L. West with 89 wins, one more than the Los Angeles Dodgers.

With 7 games to go in the regular season, the Braves and San Francisco Giants were both one game behind the Dodgers. The Braves had a season-ending road trip that started in San Francisco. Niekro opened the series at Candlestick with a 2-hit shutout, leading Atlanta to a 7-0 victory. The win put Atlanta into a first-place tie with L.A. Four days later, Niekro tossed another shutout, this one on 3 hits (with no walks and 8 strikeouts) in San Diego at Jack Murphy Stadium. In the 8th inning of that game, Niekro aided his own cause with a 2-run home run to give Atlanta a 3-0 lead (they would win 4-0). Two days later, despite losing, the Braves won the West when the Dodgers lost to the Giants.

The weather gods dealt the Braves a cruel blow in the NLCS, against Whitey Herzog’s St. Louis Cardinals. Niekro took the hill for Game 1 and had a 1-0 lead with two outs in the 5th inning when the skies opened. The game was rained out and had to be replayed in its entirety the next night. The Braves lost the game 7-0. Niekro came back to start Game 2 on two days of rest; he pitched well, giving up 2 runs in 6 innings before Torre lifted him for a pinch-hitter in the top of the 7th. The Braves had a 3-2 lead when Knucksie was lifted; the Redbirds scored runs in the 8th and 9th to walk off with a 4-3 victory. The next night (in Atlanta) the Cards completed the sweep.

1983: The End of the Road in Atlanta

Normally, when a player completes a postseason outing at the age of 43, one might expect retirement to follow shortly. But this was not the case in the career of the ageless Phil Niekro.

Knucksie was the Braves’ Opening Day starter but his season got off to a slow start; he went 2-6 with a 5.04 ERA in his first 14 outings. The 44-year old righty righted the ship, however, going 6-0 with a 2.38 in his next 10 efforts. As of Tuesday, August 9th, Niekro and the Braves had a 6.5 game lead in the N.L. West and appeared to be headed back to the postseason. Four days later, the Braves beat the Dodgers on a walk-off home run by Bob Watson to reclaim that 6.5 game advantage. The rest of the season, sadly for Braves fans, did not go so well.

On August 14th, Niekro took the hill against the Dodgers’ young lefty, Valenzuela. Paced by a first-inning home run by his former teammate Dusty Baker, the Dodgers scored 4 runs off Knucksie in the first 3 innings, leading to an early exit for the veteran knuckleballer and a 5-4 loss. Niekro pitched reasonably well in his final 9 starts (3-3, 3.81 ERA) but the team collapsed, with the Braves losing 28 of their 45 games.

Torre and pitching coach Bob Gibson (the Hall of Famer who also passed away this year) both felt that it was time for Niekro to hang up his spikes. The 44-year old disagreed and Turner agreed to release him. At the end of the ’83 season, Niekro had a career record of 268-230 (.538 WL%) to go with a 3.20 ERA (which translates to a 120 ERA+ by modern park-adjusted metrics). Baseball-Reference credits him with a superb 89.8 WAR for those 20 seasons with the Braves.

1984-85: Phil Niekro in Pinstripes

In January 1984, Phil Niekro signed a two-year contract with the New York Yankees. At the age of 45, he was an All-Star for the fifth time and the Yankees’ best starting pitcher, going 16-8 with a 3.09 ERA. In 1985, Knucksie slipped a bit (16-12, 4.09 ERA) but his 16 victories were still the 2nd most on the team. After a rough September (5.10 ERA in 6 starts and four failed attempts at his 300th win), Niekro closed the season and his Yankees’ career in style. On October 6th, the final day of the regular season, Niekro tossed a 4-hit shutout in Toronto for the 300th victory of his career.

The story of Niekro’s 300th win was something out of Hollywood. First of all, his brother Joe was on hand, having been acquired from Houston a few weeks earlier. At the same time, the Niekro brothers’ father Phil Sr. was seriously ill and hospitalized. Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner arranged for the radio play-by-play to be available for Phil’s mother in the hospital.

On the field, even at the age of 46, Niekro pitched virtually the entire shutout without the use of his signature knuckler. In the first inning, he struck out two Blue Jays with what could best be described as eephus pitches. Niekro claims he threw it only once in the entire game, on the pitch that struck out Jeff Burroughs to complete the shutout and cinch victory #300. As if by divine intervention, the elder Phil Niekro woke up in the 7th inning, heard the completion of his son’s 300th win, and savored the moment with his sons the next day after they flew to Pittsburgh to visit him in the hospital. (Phil Niekro Sr. lived another 3+ years, passing away in the summer of 1988).

(If you want to watch the entirety of Niekro’s 300th win, please click here. I watched the game while writing the piece today. If you’re a baseball fan of the 70s or 80s it’s always fun to see a classic TV broadcast. Yankees fans will enjoy Don Mattingly finish his MVP campaign with 4 hits and a homer. Incidentally, Yankees announcers Phil Rizzuto, Bill White, and Spencer Ross called several Niekro pitches as knucklers. There were a lot of pitches that looked like they might have knuckleballs but they may have been slow curves or what White called a knuckle-changeup. Only Knucksie knows for sure what each pitch actually was and, at the end of the game, he told Ross in real-time that the only knuckleball he threw was on the final pitch).

Embed from Getty Images

1986-87: Phil Niekro’s Final Two Campaigns

The Yankees re-signed Knucksie for the 1986 season but released him shortly before the season. A few days later, two days after his 47th birthday, Niekro hooked up with the Cleveland Indians, who had another knuckleballer, 28-year old Tom Candiotti. For Candiotti, it was a dream come true to have a new teammate who could help him with his signature pitch. Niekro went 11-11 with a 4.32 ERA while his new protege had a breakout campaign (16-12, 3.57 ERA).

Phil was back with the Tribe at the age of 48 for the 1987 campaign. This was the year in which the veteran right-hander started to show that age. He went 7-11 with a 5.89 ERA before being traded to the Blue Jays. Niekro lasted only three weeks in Toronto, going 0-2 with an 8.25 ERA in 3 starts. He was released on August 31, 1987.

23 days later, the Braves signed Phil to a $1 contract so that he could finish his career in Atlanta. He started just one game, the team’s final home contest of the season (against the Giants) for the Braves at Fulton-County Stadium. After two scoreless innings, Niekro ran into trouble in the 3rd. He failed to retire a batter, giving up three hits with two walks and a pair of runs. The box score shows that he gave up 5 ER because the next pitcher (Chuck Cary) promptly gave up a grand slam to Candy Maldonado.

During that final campaign, the Niekro brothers surpassed the career win total of Gaylord and Jim Perry, giving them the all-time sibling record with 539 victories. Phil Niekro finished his career with a 318-274 record (.537) and a 3.35 ERA. His 5,404 career innings were (and remain) the second most in all of baseball since 1901. His 716 career games started are the 5th most in history, behind Hall of Famers Cy Young, Steve Carlton, Don Sutton, and Greg Maddux. At the time, his 3,342 strikeouts were the 8th most ever (he’s now 11th on the list).

Embed from Getty Images

Phil Niekro’s Five Turns on the Hall of Fame Ballot.

Phil Niekro hit the writers’ Hall of Fame ballot in December 1992 (for the Hall’s Class of 1993) but Cooperstown did not come calling. Only one player was elected by the BBWAA that year (Reggie Jackson, with 93.6% of the vote). Niekro came in 2nd place with a 65.7% vote tally, less than 10 points shy of the 75% required for a plaque. Niekro seemed surprised by the snub: “lots of guys never won 300 games, or had the innings I pitched or the strikeouts (and are in). I don’t know what the guidelines are.” Now 53 years old, he joked, “maybe 318 wins are not enough. Maybe I’ll have to go out and win some more games.”

The reason for the reticence of some BBWAA voters was clearly that Niekro’s 318 wins were also paired with 274 losses, which were (and still are) the 5th most in baseball history.

“The 300-game barrier isn’t automatic with me, not when a guy pitches 24 seasons and loses 274 games. Sure, he pitched for some bad teams, but he failed to win more than half of his games in a full third of his seasons… Niekro simply was not a dominant player at his position in his time.”

— Dan Shaughnessy (Boston Globe, December 13, 1992)

Besides viewpoints like these, there was always a cadre of voters at the time who often withheld their votes on the first ballot, believing that the honor of being inducted on one’s first turn with the BBWAA should be reserved for the super-elite. (Gaylord Perry, with 314 wins but also 265 losses, had to wait until his 3rd ballot before his Cooperstown induction).

Anyway, Niekro actually went backward on the 1994 ballot, dropping to just 59.9% of the vote. He was joined on this ballot by two more 300-game winners (Steve Carlton and Don Sutton). Carlton sailed into Cooperstown with 95.5% while Sutton joined Niekro in the “compiler” bucket and got 56.8%: Sutton’s career mark was 324-256 (.559 WL%).

Niekro inched forward in 1995 (62.2%) and 1996 (68.3%) before finally getting the call in 1997, with 80.3% of the tallies. (Sutton also needed five years to make it; he was inducted to Cooperstown in 1998).

Phil Niekro’s Legacy

Phil Niekro was the lone BBWAA inductee to Cooperstown in 1997. His father was no longer alive to enjoy the day, but his mother Henrietta was there, as well as Joe, his sister (who caught Phil’s knuckler in the backyard when they were children), Phil’s wife, and their three sons. John Havlicek, Phil’s boyhood friend, was there. One of the best stories in Phil’s speech was about how his brother hit one home run in the major leagues, and it came off Phil. If you’d like to see Knucksie’s induction speech, please click here. (Joe Niekro passed away in 2006).

Besides co-owning the record of having the most wins by siblings in the history of baseball, Niekro will be forever known as the greatest knuckleballer of all-time. In the decades since his retirement, Phil served as a tutor for the next generations of knuckleballers, including Candiotti, Tim Wakefield, R.A. Dickey, and Steve Sparks.

Niekro’s career is also notable in his ability to keep baffling opposing hitters late into his late 30’s and 40’s. Of Niekro’s 318 career wins, 208 came after he turned 35. That’s the most in baseball history, 16 ahead of Cy Young’s 192 late-career W’s.

Niekro won 121 of his 318 career games after turning 40. He tossed 1,977 innings after that 40th birthday, 10 more than Hall of Famer Dizzy Dean tossed his entire career. Nobody could baffle and befuddle opposing batsmen better than Phil Niekro.

Rest in peace, Phil.

Embed from Getty Images