Niekro Gets 300th Win--a Shutout of Blue Jays

Phil Niekro, whose fluttering knuckleball brought his first 299 major league wins and the nickname “Knucksie,” put his bread-and-butter pitch aside to go for his landmark 300th victory Sunday on the last day of the 1985 season.

So it was with an assortment of screwballs, “dead-fish” fastballs, slip-pitches, curves and the occasional fastball away that Niekro led the New York Yankees to an 8-0 pasting of the American League East champion Toronto Blue Jays.

It was only with two out in the ninth inning, a runner on second and slugger Jeff Burroughs at the plate that Niekro went back to three straight knucklers and struck his former teammate out swinging to end the game.

Niekro’s Yankee mates--led by his brother Joe, also a knuckleball pitcher, rushed to the mound to congratulate him, as a Toronto crowd of more than 44,000 rose with a warm ovation.

“I always wanted to pitch a game without throwing a knuckleball,” said Niekro, who finished the season with a 16-12 record. “A lot of people thought I couldn’t get people out without the knuckleball.”

He certainly proved that he could, in the process becoming at 46 the oldest player to pitch a major league shutout.

Niekro gave up just four hits and three walks, along with four strikeouts to move past Ferguson Jenkins into seventh place on the all-time strikeout list with 3,196.

Niekro said the highlight of his day wasn’t the baseball game, but when Joe gave him good news about their 72-year-old father, Phil Niekro Sr., who is severely ill in a hospital in Wheeling, W.Va., with internal bleeding.

“The nicest feeling of the whole day is when Joe told me right after I came off the mound that they took my father out of intensive care this morning,” Niekro said.

The Niekro brothers plan to fly to Wheeling on Monday to see their father, who learned the knuckler himself as a semi-pro pitcher and taught it to both his sons.

“I’m going to take him my hat and give him the baseball,” Phil said.

Joe Niekro also stepped in as warm-up catcher before the ninth inning, and visited the mound when Burroughs was batting to see if his brother wanted to consider an intentional walk. Joe also had planned to pitch in relief, if Phil had not been going for the shutout.

“I just wanted to be a part of it,” the younger Niekro said.

After clinching the division championship with a victory over the Yankees on Saturday, the Blue Jays rested all their regulars except second-baseman Damaso Garcia, playing a line-up of second-stringers.

“I don’t feel bad about that. Those guys are professional ballplayers,” Niekro said. But he said he would have gladly “traded it in for a game that meant something for the pennant race.”

Both Joe and Phil become free agents this winter, and speculation has both possibly heading back to Atlanta, with Phil perhaps managing the Braves as well as pitching.

“I’m a free agent, Joe’s a free agent, there’s 26 teams out there,” Phil Niekro said, refusing to speculate about where they would end up. But he said he is not ready to hang up his glove and spikes.

“I don’t see any reason I can’t pitch next year,” Niekro said. “I win 16 ball games, it’s tough to say you’re done, you’re through. Mentally I feel fine, physically I feel fine.”

He looked in fine form to the Blue Jay batters. The only hits were a single to center by Cecil Fielder in the fourth, a double against the left-field fence in the seventh by Jeff Burroughs, a grounder up the middle by Manny Lee in the eighth, and a pinch-hit double up the gap in left-center by Tony Fernandez in the ninth.

The milestone came more than 20 years after Niekro’s first major league victory on May 13, 1965, when he pitched five scoreless innings of relief for the Milwaukee Braves, who rallied to beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 5-4.

He moved with the Braves to Atlanta in 1966, and was the team’s ace starter for most of the next 16 years.

Niekro won a career-high 23 games in 1969, when the team won the National League West division. He also reached the 20-game milestone with a 20-13 season in 1974 and went 21-20 in 1979.

At the end of the 1983 season, the Braves dismayed their fans by releasing the popular Niekro. He signed with the Yankees and proved he was not ready for retirement, posting a 16-8 record last year.

Niekro’s 16 victories this year are the most ever by a player his age, by a wide margin. Jack Quinn won nine for Philadelphia in 1930, when he was 46.

Niekro said his career--and especially his 300th victory without recourse to the knuckler--should be an inspiration to baseball hopefuls who can’t boast intimidating talents.

“It shows you don’t have to throw 95 miles an hour and have a Dwight Gooden curveball to win in the big leagues,” he said.