PHIL NIEKRO : Yankees’ Grand Old Man Still Is Striking Them Out at 46

Phil Niekro of the New York Yankees doesn’t keep his teeth in a jar in his clubhouse dressing cubicle. He doesn’t have an endorsement deal with Geritol, doesn’t take a rocking chair with him on the road, and doesn’t sit on the porch and tell his grandchildren stories of his baseball glory days.

The truth is, Niekro doesn’t even have any grandchildren. But as a middle-aged man surrounded by teammates and opponents nearly half his age, he is constantly portrayed as being older than he is.

Some of the words being used to describe Niekro these days might lead one to believe that every day he pitches is old-timer’s day. He has been called a pitching relic, a member of the Social Security set, and a graying knuckleballer.

Every four or five days, Niekro goes out and throws knuckleballs that make hitters resemble someone trying to swat flies in the dark, then picks up the papers the next morning and reads how remarkable it is for a guy his age to be doing this sort of thing. Such is life for the only active major leaguer born in the 1930s. Fortunately, Niekro has been around long enough that he is unaffected by such cockeyed praise.

“I guess that’s one of the things they keep writing about,” he said with a shrug. “Someone’s got to be the oldest player in baseball.”

And who better than Philip Henry (Knucksie) Niekro. Few professional baseball players have aged more gracefully. At 46, Niekro is two months into his 27th professional season. He is baseball’s ’55 Thunderbird, a timeless, tireless classic. The kind they just don’t make like they used to.

He will be appearing in his 781st major league game when he takes the mound for tonight’s series opener against the Angels at Yankee Stadium. He has pitched 4,894 innings, struck out 3,088 batters, and has compiled a 289-241 record. He has been on the disabled list only once, when a rib injury forced him to miss the first few weeks of the 1982 season.

This season, he is 5-3 with a 4.40 earned-run average and 40 strikeouts. The knuckleball is as batty and baffling as ever and, although he has a few more wrinkles and gray hairs than the average major league baseball player, he can still make those young whippersnappers look downright silly.

“I never look at him as the oldest guy in baseball,” Yankee catcher Butch Wynegar said. “He’s not just some 46-year-old man hanging on, trying to earn some money. He’s a good pitcher.”

There is no Phil Niekro secret to longevity. Niekro’s idea of aerobic exercise is shagging a few balls in the outfield between starts. If he wanted to jog, he’d enter a race. The way he figures it, he doesn’t run the ball up to the plate, he throws it. He has developed his training philosophy accordingly.

“I just keep my arm as healthy as I can and try to keep myself mentally prepared for the whole season,” he said. “That’s the toughest part. That’s where a lot of guys probably break down--the mental end of the game.

“You can either throw a ball or you can’t. You run or you can’t. You can swing a bat or you can’t. You can catch a ball or you can’t. That’s cut and dried. But the mental end of the game--162 games a year and six weeks of spring training, the ups and downs, the good games and the bad games--that’s the toughest part a lot of players have to deal with.”

Niekro knows all about ups and downs. The Atlanta Braves have retired his jersey, No. 35. A bronze sculpture of his likeness stands outside Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, next to those of Henry Aaron and Ty Cobb. All of this from an organization that, after the 1983 season, tried to convince Niekro to take his knuckleball and go home.

On Oct. 7, 1983, Niekro met with Braves’ owner Ted Turner and General Manager John Mullen to discuss his future with the organization. He was told he didn’t have one. Seniority apparently didn’t count for much on a team that had decided to put much of its fate in the arms of younger pitchers.

“Basically, they asked me to retire,” Niekro said after the meeting. “Basically quit pitching. Thanks but no thanks. I don’t feel like retiring.”

Instead, Niekro asked for and was given his unconditional release, ending a 24-year association with the Braves. Turner has since confessed publicly that it was a dumb move on the part of the Braves. Nearly 20 months after the fact, Niekro is inclined to agree.

“Everything they (Turner and Mullen) told me were reasons why they should have kept me,” he said. “I think I would have felt a lot better if they would have come in and said, ‘Hey, we think you’re done. Washed up. We don’t think you can pitch anymore.’

“That would have made more sense to me than calling me in and saying, ‘Hey, we want you to retire, but we know you can still win in the big leagues.’ That’s what I have a hard time understanding.”

It didn’t take Niekro long to prove there was still a place for him in baseball. That place--of all places--was Yankee Stadium. He signed a contract with the Yankees Jan. 6, 1984, and a few months later became the oldest player ever to appear in a game for the Yankees.

That was much more than a token appearance. As the 1984 season progressed, Niekro’s name began popping up in the same sentence as that of Cy Young. At the All-Star break, Niekro was 11-4 with a 1.19 ERA. A 4-0 start in April was the best of his career, and led many to speculate that he was on some sort of crusade to make the Braves look foolish for letting him go. Niekro denies that he was out for revenge.

“I didn’t go through a big vindictive type of atmosphere or say, ‘Hey, Atlanta, look,’ ” he said. “They told me when I left down there that they knew I could still pitch.”

But leaving Atlanta meant leaving home. While his wife, Nancy, sons Philip (17), John (16) and Michael (12) remained in Lilburn, Ga., Niekro’s home away from home was a hotel room in Teaneck, N.J. “It was like a seven-month road trip for me,” he said.

“Last year, I was pretty unsettled throughout the year, even though I pitched pretty well. I was kind of lost in the sense of what part of the country I was living and staying in.

“I was spoiled in Atlanta, living in the same town I played in for so many years. My family’s growing up there. I got to fish there a lot during the season. It was just comfortable for me. Then, all of the sudden, I just couldn’t do that any more. That was the toughest part. The playing was the easy part.”

Niekro said he hasn’t felt quite as displaced this spring. He has grown accustomed to Yankee pinstripes, and he has become more acclimated to life in the big city. The New Jersey hotel room can’t compare with his home in Lilburn, but it’s more livable now.

“I’ve gotten to know the area a little bit,” he said. “I know some restaurants and places. I know some people. I know where the ballpark is and how long it takes me to get there. Last year, I didn’t know whether to leave an hour before practice or three with that traffic on the George Washington Bridge.”

Phil Niekro is a coal miner’s son, and legend has it that he has his dad to thank for success in baseball. As the story goes, Phil Sr. taught Niekro and his brother, Joe, how to throw the knuckleball, which he learned from a fellow coal miner near the family’s home in Lansing, Ohio.

Niekro has said repeatedly that he has no idea why the pitch behaves the way it does, nor does he know which direction it will take when he lets it go. He got his 3,000th strikeout last July 4 in Arlington, Tex., on a knuckleball in the dirt that got away from Wynegar, enabling Texas’ Larry Parrish to reach first.

“I can’t even throw the stupid pitch in areas,” he said after his last outing against the Angels (May 17). “I’ve got no idea where it’s going. I’m lucky just to get it over the plate.”

Yeah, dumb luck. On that night, Niekro had so much of it that he allowed only two hits through 7 innings in a 6-0 victory. Not a bad night’s work for a pitching relic.

The next day, accounts of the game told of Niekro’s triumph over youth. Angel starter Mike Witt, 24, got the loss. Witt broke into professional baseball in 1978, Niekro’s 14th season in the big leagues.

The contrast was sharp: Witt’s swift fastball and sharp curve opposing Niekro’s knuckler, which seems to travel to the plate in slow motion. Witt, who many expect to have a bright future, dueling Niekro, whose future is uncertain. Considering retirement has become an annual ritual for him, and he’s not sure how much longer he will put it off.

“I don’t know,” he said. This is the last year on my Yankee contract. I don’t know what the Yankees have in store for me . . . I haven’t talked to anybody. I’m sure it’ll depend on what happens between now and the end of the season. I’m not looking that far ahead.”

Baseball’s oldest player has made a career out of taking things slow. No sense changing now.