NY Mets knuckleball pitcher R.A. Dickey wins 2012 NL Cy Young Award

We were excited to learn that NY Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey won this year’s National League Cy Young Award! This is the MLB pitching award, coveted by pitchers throughout baseball, awarded each year to a pitcher in each league (American League and National League). Here’s the Mets’ official congratulations card, and we join in that congratulations.

Image source: NY Mets

This is the first time a Mets pitchers has won the award since Doc Gooden did in 1985. R.A. Dickey had an amazing season – he won 20 games, had an ERA (earned run average – how many runs a pitcher lets through) of 2.73, and threw a total of 230 strikeouts this year. This is an impressive record.

He is also the first knuckleballer to win the award. Why is that a big deal? Well, there aren’t too many of them out there. It’s such a wacky pitch that it really sticks out in people’s memory, and can cause havoc for the batters, since it is very hard to know what it’s going to do once the pitcher throws it (R.A. Dickey: “Once it leaves your hand it’s up to the world what it’s gonna do.”).

A movie, aptly entitled “Kuckleball!” was released this summer, and R.A. Dickey was featured in it.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGtpS1nJluE]

“I think every little kid should learn to throw a knuckleball, you know?” – R.A. Dickey

Congrats R.A. [MLB Blogs]