I am currently working on a short story titled, "The Knuckleballer." The winner of Big League Chew's essay contest, "What Making the Big Dance Would Mean to Me," gets to pitch to one batter in an actual major league game.
Although it is fictional, there are some autobiographical parallels as well. I, like Dickie Lamb, the essay winner, was also a knuckleballer. And like him, I also got sick after chewing my grandpa's cured tobacco when I was a kid. So I, too, switched from chewing yellow tobacco to chewing pink bubble gum – the kind that came from packs of baseball cards. And, like Dickie Lamb, I attached the cards to my bicycle spokes with clothes pins to create the coolest sound around.
Dickie bought his baseball cards at Priddy's, the legendary general store near Danbury, North Carolina. It was there, on October 3, 1951, where he heard the radio broadcast of the Giants' Bobby Thomson hitting the pennant-winning home run against the Brooklyn Dodgers. The blast became known as "The Shot Heard 'Round the World." The story's protagonist recounts how the old men, who were sitting around a pot-bellied stove, began "jumping up and down and going nuts!"
Eight-year-old Dickie Lamb, a Dodgers fan, soon hopped on his bicycle and headed back home to nearby Dodgetown. His dad, who worked the graveyard shift at a textile mill in Madison, was up early and waiting for him. "Dickie Lamb," he said, "If you skip school one more time I'll take that tobacco stick you use for a baseball bat and break it over your head."
My dad never threatened to break a tobacco stick over my head. He did say, though, that if I ever got a whipping in school he would give me one ten times worse when I got home. I never got a whipping in school, but my sixth grade teacher once broke a pencil over my head. I didn't tell Dad. I figured a tobacco stick was about ten times worse than a pencil.
Dickie Lamb's knuckleball took him to the semi-pro level. So did mine. But that's where the parallels end. In 1994, Dickie Lamb lost the forefinger on his throwing hand to a lawnmower blade. The accident gave him an uncanny baseball grip, perfect for throwing a fluttering knuckleball. He won the Big League Chew essay contest in 1995 – and the opportunity to face one batter when the Dodgers played the fictional Las Vegas Pokers in the last game of the season.
Maybe I'll tell you how the story ends in a future column. People often ask me if my childhood dream was to become a writer. The answer is no. My childhood dream was to become a big league pitcher.
Raymond Reid can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .