Niekro Gets Call Knuckleballer Elected To Hall
Getting elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame was a relief for Phil Niekro because of what it meant to others close to him.
“It feels good knowing that everyone else is going to feel good about it - my mother, my sister, my brother, my wife, my children, hopefully the Braves organization, which I’m sure they’re as proud of me as I am of them,” Niekro said at news conference Monday night.
His election didn’t come until his fifth year on the ballot.
“I can see why I haven’t, then I could see why I should have,” he said of missing out the first four times. “You just go with the flow. You just got to wait 364 more days. Those go by, you wait 364 more days until that call you get.”
There will be no more waiting for the right-hander who won 318 games with his knuckleball - the fluttering pitch he learned from his father in the backyard of their Ohio home.
Niekro was the only player elected to the Hall by the Baseball Writers Association. A year ago, it elected no one. Missing by a scant nine votes was Niekro’s fellow 300-game winner, Don Sutton. A total of 473 baseball writers voted, meaning 355 were needed to attain the necessary 75 percent for election. Niekro received 380 votes. Sutton had 346, or 73.1 percent.
Former Reds slugger Tony Perez was third in the voting, missing by 43 for the same 65 percent he received a year ago.
Niekro spent 18 seasons with the Atlanta Braves after a 1-1/2-year stint when the team was in Milwaukee. He also pitched two seasons with the Yankees, two for Cleveland and had a three-game stint with Toronto before ending his career with a farewell appearance with the Braves on Sept. 27, 1987.
He said his greatest and worst days in baseball came with the Braves.
“The worst was when I got released,” he said. “The down of my life was when I had to pack my bags and walk out of the Atlanta clubhouse.”
Then, when it was apparent his career was at its end, Stan Kasten of the Braves signed Niekro to a one-day contract “for a buck, I think.”
Niekro said it was his greatest day in the game, pitching one last time for Atlanta because it let him “walk away from my career in baseball with an Atlanta Braves hat on. The no-hitter, winning 300 games, all that stuff all becomes secondary. I was born a Brave and I left a Brave.”
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: TALLY x-Phil Niekro…380 Don Sutton…346 Tony Perez…312 Ron Santo…186 Jim Rice…178 Steve Garvey…167 Bruce Sutter…130 x-elected (355 votes out of 473 votes cast needed for election)