Why New York Mets’ R.A. Dickey deserves CY Young Award for 2012 regular season?-Part 1
Carrying the New York Mets on his shoulders all alone throughout the first half of the season, the starting pitcher R.A. Dickey has made a statement this year. Other than exhibiting his skills in a most spectacular fashion, he has enlivened the debate about
the role of the pitcher for a team.
In an era where home-runs abound and runs are manufactured at a brisk pace, the significance of the pitchers was dwindling and taking them to a level which is against the classic norms of the game. Thanks to Dickey, the notion that the pitchers are the ultimate
backbone for a team and that with their mastery even less than a mediocre offence can be veiled and made to look as capable of winning games has been revived.
The debate does not end here. What Dickey has done for the Mets cannot be buried under the recognition which will be forgotten as soon as the season ends. If it is done so, apart from the injustice, the unseen impact that the knuckle-ball can wreak with
regard to drawing strike-outs will not be explained to the upcoming generations of pitchers as enthusiastically as with the conferring of prestigious awards on Dickey.
Before one explores why CY Young Award should be given to Dickey, it is interesting to see how he was perceived before the start of the season. All the way from the beginning of the year into Spring Training, the Mets’ clubhouse was dominated by the issues
regarding their financial crisis and payroll cuts. The obvious outcome of these was the drastic decline in expectations.
With Jose Reyes lost to free agency and the occurrence of injuries to some of the players along with the financial crisis, the fans were demoralised. In the midst, Dickey was on the roster being looked upon as a player with the penchant to turn things around
but with little talent to back his desire. He was like a soldier who has seen his companions dying before him and despite having little power to retaliate entertains the idea of fighting back, even knowing that his commander has given up all hope.
His past record was enough to suggest that the management will be better off shifting their hopes to someone else just in order to give the touch of rationality to the objectives they were aiming to achieve.
However, as a reflection of the practice that nature follows toward the weakest in order to thwart the imagination of common human beings, Dickey has turned out to be the only starting pitcher with the team who will stand out whenever given an opportunity
on the mound.
With the number of wins and the strike-outs that he has recorded thus far in the season, not only is he among the top candidates for winning the CY Young Award, he is redefining the potential of the damage that knuckleballers can do to the batters.
Up until the beginning of the season, the knuckle-balls were considered more as a technique to block runs as opposed to retiring line-ups over and completely tying the fate of the opposition with the proper handling of them. All the knuckleballers that baseball
has seen have not attained anything more than beyond a certain level. Thus, there were the notions and the stereotypes being developed toward knucklers before this season.
Continued in Part 2
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
Tags: