The Million Dollar Flick
Behold, the cleverest man in Major League Baseball. King of jugglers, fire eaters, tongue curlers, and eyelid flippers everywhere, Tim Wakefield has made his professional sports career out of a parlor trick.
Wakefield is a sports anomaly. An aging, average-build pitcher who subsists solely on the basis of a trick pitch that he has mastered. He has literally improvised his way from mediocre AAA first baseman, to MLB mainstay.
Wakefield achieves all of this by virtue of his knuckleball, a pitch that is flung via fingertip to achieve nearly zero ball rotation and use the surrounding weather conditions to determine its final location. And so he thrives pitching in the dreary, rainy, windy climate of Boston.
It’s a pitch that can baffle the most skilled and coordinated people in the world. It has been known to throw off the timing of an entire team for weeks after dealing with its bends and dives.
Needing only a mere flick of the wrist to release the knuckler, Wakefield has the ability to pitch every two or three days, more often than a normal hurler. Wake can pitch in any situation, foul up the timing of virtually any hitter, and compete in a World Series caliber rotation.
The knuckle flick has earned Wakefield tens of millions of dollars in his 17-year career. In other words, it’s the world’s most valuable stupid human trick.
Is this just baseball inspired or are you trying to draw Greg out of his editing cave?
two birds, one stone