Baseball: He joins Niekro, Wells, Fox in the game’s shrine in Cooperstown.

The first time Tom Lasorda saw Phil Niekro on the mound, he thought of an old baseball adage.

“They say you don’t want to have a knuckleballer pitching for you or against you,” Lasorda said.

That was Niekro’s problem too. It was the one pitch he had mastered from his father, growing up in the coal mine country of eastern Ohio. And not a lot of baseball people liked it very much.

On Sunday, when he and Lasorda went into the Hall of Fame together, the pitcher they called “Knucksie” recalled how close he came to being cut because of the gimmick pitch that got him his first contract for $500.

“They have those organizational meetings every winter when they decide who to keep and who to let go,” Niekro said. “Five hundred bucks. You can afford to write that off. I know a couple of times, Birdie Tebbetts was the man in the Braves organization who raised his hand and said ‘Keep the man.’ ”

So Niekro stayed around, eventually for 24 years, winning 318 games and gaining election to the Hall of Fame. Also inducted Sunday in the tiny hamlet celebrated as the birthplace of baseball were infielders Nellie Fox and Willie Wells, increasing membership in the shrine to 232. Longtime baseball writer Charley Feeney and broadcaster Jimmy Dudley received media awards.

The single traffic light in downtown Cooperstown worked overtime as thousands of visitors jammed the town to honor Lasorda, the long-time Dodger manager, and Niekro. Many fans wore shirts and hats in tribute to Fox, the scrappy second baseman, and Wells, the 14th Negro League player inducted. Joanne Fox accepted for her late husband and Stella Wells accepted for her father.

Fox, a 12-time All-Star, played 19 major league seasons and was the American League’s MVP in 1959 when he led the Chicago White Sox to their first pennant in 40 years. He won three Gold Gloves and his 798 consecutive games played at second base remains a major league record. He joins his old double play partner, Luis Aparicio, in the Hall of Fame.

Fox and Aparicio are the fourth double play combination in Cooperstown, joining Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Joe Cronin and Bobby Doerr of the Boston Red Sox, and Joe Tinker and Johnny Evers of the Chicago Cubs.

Wells batted .331 in 20 years of Negro League ball. He had 123 home runs, including 27 in only 88 games to set a Negro League record in 1929, and led the league with a .403 batting average the next year.

Lasorda, whose Dodger teams won 1,599 games in 20 seasons, recalled a conversation with Reese about the 1955 Dodgers, Brooklyn’s lone world championship team.

“I said, ‘Pee Wee, if I told you one of the 25 guys on that team that year would manage the Dodgers to a world championship in 1981, you’d put me at No. 25.’ ”

Reese disagreed, telling Lasorda he would be No. 24.

“Who’s 25th, then?” Lasorda wondered.

“Amoros,” Reese said, referring to Cuban outfielder Sandy Amoros. “He couldn’t speak English.”

Lasorda’s voice broke once when he talked about long-time Dodgers executive Al Campanis, who is ailing. He called Campanis, “My mentor, who taught so much about the game of baseball and life.”

Niekro’s emotional moment came when he spoke of his family, including his brother, Joe, who also pitched in the major leagues.

“We faced each other nine times,” he said. “He won five and I won four. That’s the way it should be. He’s the baby. He got one hit off me. He hit one home run in the big leagues and it was off me. Won a game, too.”

Then he spoke of his father, Phil, Sr.

“He taught me how to catch a fish, rabbit hunt, squirrel hunt, play pinochle,” he said. “Whenever I went out to pitch, he said, ‘Play ball, son, play ball.’

“Well, I think there’s a game going on somewhere now.” Then he rattled off the names of some of the old coal miners who worked with his father, men he sometimes tried his knuckler out on. As his voice cracked, he said, “Play ball, dad, play ball.”