Knuckleball! color. 85+ min. Ricki Stern & Annie Sundberg, FilmBuff, Break Thru Films in assoc. with Major League Baseball Prods.,dist. by MPI Media, 2013.

摘要

This documentary follows two great knuckleball pitchers, Boston's Tim Wake-field and R.A. Dickey, then with the New York Mets, during the 2011 major league season. Knuckleball legends of the past 40 years including Hall of Famer Phil Niekro, Charlie Hough, Wilbur Wood, Jim Bouton, and Tom Candiotti make brief appearances. The knuckleball is a strange pitch thrown at a very slow velocity and has an unpredictable movement. Wakefield and Dickey are older players familiar with failure who have found an ingenious way to lengthen their careers in a wholly successful way. Oddly, few pitchers can throw the knuckle pitch well, and those rare men have formed a kind of fraternity. Viewers see the close ties among these knucklers when they get together and are interviewed at a "reunion" included here. Wakefield with the Red Sox and Dickey can claim a nationwide audience. The film dips into their family life as well, with each man coming across as sympathetic and credible. VERDICT Not a deep psychological treatise, this film is rather a straightforward telling of interesting customs of baseball that even viewers with little baseball knowledge will enjoy.