Mariners pitcher George Kirby pays tribute to Tim Wakefield with first pitch
Published in Baseball
BOSTON — Only a handful of people knew what George Kirby was going to do when he stepped on the mound at Fenway Park in the Wednesday afternoon heat.
With a large portion of the announced crowd of 34,643 still trying to make their way into the ancient ballpark for a late-afternoon start time, Kirby’s first pitch went largely unnoticed.
Even for the media watching, most weren’t sure what they’d just seen.
With his first pitch of the game, Kirby used a short delivery with no leg kick and flipped a pitch at leadoff hitter Jarren Duran that was high and inside and registered 74 mph on the stadium radar gun.
The Red Sox television announcers seemed perplexed about the pitch, checking the MLB Statcast data, which initially and incorrectly labeled the pitch a split-finger fastball.
But for those familiar with Kirby’s repertoire and mechanics, they recognized it right away — he had just thrown his first knuckleball of the season.
“It was indeed a knuckleball,” Kirby said. “And it was a ball. I want that one back. I wish I could’ve started 0-1.”
For those unfamiliar, Kirby’s pitch repertoire does include a knuckleball. It’s a pitch that he’s had since childhood, knuckling up all four of his fingers. It’s a real pitch that has nasty movement. But it also requires a different delivery so it’s not something he can use often. Despite threatening to use it more, he’s now thrown it twice in his career.
A year ago in Game No. 162, Kirby started against the Rangers with the Mariners eliminated from the postseason a day earlier. In the first inning, he unleashed a first pitch knuckleball to Corey Seager, who loves to swing at the first pitch. The pitch danced and cut and Seager took a vicious hack at it, missing badly. He then gave a bemused look to Kirby, who was smirking at him on the mound.
The pitch also had meaning. Tim Wakefield, one of the most famous knuckleball pitchers in recent baseball history, had just passed away a day before that, losing a long battle with brain cancer.
It’s why Kirby decided to throw a knuckleball in his first pitch at Fenway, where Wakefield had been a stalwart with the Sox for 17 seasons as another tribute to the Boston favorite.
“I was thinking about it for like the last two or three weeks,” he said. “I loved watching the guy. He was a special player. So just being able to do it here in Boston was pretty cool.”
Kirby only wished his tribute was a strike.
“It’s hard to replicate the one I did last year,” he said. “I was just hoping it wasn’t a home run first pitch or something. I just wanted to get it over the plate.”
Growing up in Rye, New York, Kirby started throwing a knuckleball with his friends and continued to use it during through high school.
“I loved watching him,” Kirby said. “I started throwing knuckleballs because of him. Even though I grew up a Yankees fan at heart, I loved just watched him do his thing all the time. It was incredible. It’s just an honor to be able to do something like that.”
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