Steve Sparks is a great storyteller, which works well for him in the broadcast environment. Now in his 14th season working alongside Robert Ford, Sparks forms one part of the Houston Astros radio team that ranks among the best in the business. He made a living by throwing knuckleballs. Pitching for five teams from 1995-2004, most notably the Detroit Tigers, the 61-year-old Tulsa, Oklahoma native took the mound 270 times and posted a 59-76 winless record and a 4.88 ERA. In all, he faced 626 different batters over 1,319 2/3 career innings.
How well do you remember his most notable matchups? Following in the footsteps of Geoff Blum, David Cone, Mark Grant, Mark Gubicza, Jeff Montgomery, and Dan Petry – links to those pieces can be found on their player pages – the Sparks sat down for the seventh installment of our Challenging Career Quiz.
I started by asking which hitter he faced the most times.
“It would have to be someone in the American League Central,” replied Sparks, who I spoke to at Fenway Park in early May. “I’ll say Frank Thomas.”
His guess was right. Sparks faced Thomas 60 times, with “The Big Hurt” going 13-for-49 with three home runs, nine walks, and two plunkings. His Hall of Fame memories?
“I felt like he couldn’t get to the outside corner,” Sparks told me. “I felt like if I had to go somewhere, throw a fastball or a cutter, I could go to Frank Thomas.
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“He was absolutely smitten,” Sparks added. “We’re seeing it a lot with Yordan Alvarez right now. He’s not just a slugger by any means. He’s an on-base machine and a slugger.”
Asked who was closest to Thomas in the number of plate appearances he faced, the knuckleballer-turned-broadcaster guessed Jim Thome. He wasn’t far off – he faced the left-hander 52 times – but the right answer is Omar Vizquel, who he faced 59 times.
“I don’t think I did very well against him,” Sparks said. “As far as throwing the knuckleball, that type of hitter had a little success. They weren’t big; they stayed back and went the other way. Vizquel probably did pretty well against me.”
It really wasn’t like that. The defensively gifted shortstop fanned just two, but also went an insignificant 14-for-56 (.250) with one walk.
Told that two players are tied for the most hits against him, with 16 each, Sparks asked if both played in the AL Central. I told him that one did, and the other did not. His non-AL Central projection, Derek Jeter (15-for-36), was close behind. The right answers are Alex Rodriguez (16-for-38) and Ray Durham (16-for-52).
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Sparks said of Durham, a former Chicago White Sox star for eight seasons. “I played with him a lot in Triple-A, and he had a good approach. He was one of those guys who didn’t try to pull the baseball. He would go with it, but if he saw it high, he would pass it well and go the other way.”
Another part of the answer was not what Sparks expected.
“Really?” he answered when he heard Rodriguez’s name. “That surprises me, I remember I had a good success against him in the beginning, although I remember that after a while he started trying to put the ball in, instead of trying to pull me.
“He broke my finger one time,” Sparks added. “I think we were in Seattle. He hit one hopper that I reached and broke the ring finger on my bare hand. It’s still bent. I didn’t miss a single time. My next start was against Oakland and they shot me up with some medicine before the game to kill the pain. I don’t remember exactly how I did it, but it was a decision not to take it.
My apples-to-oranges reference to the famous Dock Ellis game elicited laughter. “It was a different drug,” Sparks replied.
After first guessing Thome, Sparks named A-Rod as the player most Gophers have committed to. One of these five is particularly memorable.
“I didn’t have many good games when I was in Arizona, but I remember I had a good game against the Yankees,” said Sparks, who allowed one run in seven innings that day. “I pitched well, but A-Rod hit one of the longest home runs in that ballpark. It was Bank One Ballpark at the time, ‘The Bob.’ All my son kept talking about in the elevator when we got to the parking garage after the game: How far was that home run? Gary Sheffield was in the elevator with us, and he was laughing. We were beating them, but A-Rod hit that bomb.”
Sparks has faced 29 different batters 35 times or more. Of them, who had the lowest OPS? In other words, what hitter did he have?
“I had no one,” Sparks replied. “But I’m going to guess Greg Norton.”
That represents a classic miss for the bowler. He faced Norton only 11 times, the switch-hitter going 3-for-7 with a double and four walks. The right answer is Rafael Palmeiro, who went just 3-for-33 with a .586 OPS.
“I think that was probably a coincidence,” Sparks said of his success against Palmeiro. “I remember having a great game against Baltimore, and a couple of good games against Texas, but I think it depends on whether I have a good knuckleball or not. If those days coincide with facing Palmeiro, so be it. If you have a good game, it doesn’t really matter who you are, to be honest with you.”
And, there are, as he said earlier, better ways to approach a knuckleball pitcher. Taking the ball another way is one of them.
“I’ll tell you the best way to do it,” said Sparks. “I used to talk to Tim Wakefield about it. The guys who get up to home plate, as close as possible, toes to the chalk, make you aim the ball away from them, because you don’t want to hit them and give them a free base. That took one side of the plate away and usually got them better pitches to hit. You could spin the ball by misdirecting it.”
“Most of it is a swing type,” he continued to comment. “Some hitters had swings that were long, and they played really well compared to the speed and speed of the knuckleball. And it’s funny, sometimes it was the catchers who were successful against me. Ron Karkovice [3-for-10 with two home runs]. Tony Pena [3-for-10 with a double]. They had a good change in the game.”
A one-hitter, he went 9-for-12 with a double, a home run, and a walk. Asked if he knew who that was, Sparks first guessed Paul Molitor (8-for-16 with a pair of two-baggers and a walk), then gave the correct answer: Troy O’Leary.
“Rafael Devers actually reminds me of him,” Sparks said of the left-hander, who played seven of his 11 seasons with the Red Sox. “His body, but he was one of my favorite players in the team [with the Brewers]. We got along really well. He probably had a lot of confidence against me. He was in good condition and let the plane fly.”
Or maybe those were the games where his knuckleball wasn’t very good?
“I don’t know,” Sparks said. “I probably threw a lot of fastballs. I threw more fastballs than a lot of knuckleball hitters.”
