When I last wrote about R. A. Dickey, his book Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball had just been published, and, as part of the promotional effort, he was a guest on NPR's Fresh Air. I listened, transfixed, on my car radio in the parking lot of the local Target store. There's a lot to like about Dickey--the sub headline to a recent New Yorker article (behind a subscriber wall, alack, but just the abstract is a good read) asks, "Is R. A. Dickey too good to be true?" If Chuck Hagel is my favorite Republican, Dickey is my favorite born-again Christian. He majored in English! His interest in Hemingway led him to climb Mount Kilimanjaro! His speaking voice--I think it's what Garrison Keillor would sound like if he was from Tennessee--is all the more attractive because, as an occasional viewer of C-Span, I tend to associate drawls with stupidity.
Dickey is also the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner. I'm not really sure why local Twins fans haven't made a louder hullabaloo about how we let him get away after he pitched for us in the 2009 season. His E.R.A. that year was a ho-hum 4.62, but maybe the front-office sharpies could have taken note that
1) 2009 was his best season so far,
2) knuckleballers can pitch forever, and are often at their best after 35 (Dickey was 34 that year); and
3) he could have been retained for what, in the world of big-league baseball, qualifies as a song--even now, his salary is a measly $5 million.
In the three seasons since the Twins let him go, Dickey has gone 39-28 for a team that never won half its games. He has pitched 616 innings, compiling an ERA of 2.95 and a sub 1.20 WHIP (walks allowed plus hits allowed divided by innings pitched). Over those three seasons, he has been arguably the best pitcher in baseball, and inarguably the best bargain. For some reason, the Twins were a lot slower to give up on Nelson Liriano.
