Wilbur Wood, the Chicago White Sox knuckleballer who started more games and pitched more innings in a season than any pitcher in the last 100 years, died on Saturday in Burlington, Mass. He was 84.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his wife, Janet.
Because he threw the knuckleball, which is thrown far slower than a major league fastball, there was less strain on his arm, and his managers could and did put him in the starting lineup again and again.
Wood, a left-hander, led the league in innings pitched twice and games started four times. In 1972, he threw 376⅔ innings, the most by any pitcher since 1917. He started 49 times that season, the most since 1908. Neither mark has been matched since.
In more recent times, even the most durable pitchers have not thrown more than 230 or so innings or started more than 35 games in a season.
Wood was not just an ironman pitcher, but also an accomplished one, tallying four 20-win seasons.
Wilbur Forrester Wood was born on Oct. 22, 1941, in Cambridge, Mass., the son of Wilbur Sr., who worked in wholesale food, and Svea (Swenson) Wood. In high school, he played quarterback on the football team and also played ice hockey, in addition to baseball.
The Boston Red Sox signed him in 1960, but he struggled to establish himself in the major leagues, and they released him in 1964. He spent a season as a reliever with the Pittsburgh Pirates before the White Sox acquired him.
Wood had thrown the knuckleball a bit when he was young, though as a professional he had pitched conventionally. The White Sox at the time had one of the greatest knuckleballers, Hoyt Wilhelm. He and Wood began working on the knuckleball together, and Wood decided to try it as his go-to pitch, throwing it about 80 percent of the time.
A knuckleball is gripped with the knuckle on or just over the ball. While the ball approaches the batter slowly, it is still difficult to hit, because it comes in with almost no spin, making it flutter unpredictably.
Wilhelm and Phil Niekro knuckled their way to the Hall of Fame, and in more recent years Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey had success with the pitch. But the list of knuckleballers is surprisingly short; the pitch is hard to learn, and few have mastered it. In any given season there are seldom more than a few players who can throw it effectively.
Baseball fans sometimes wonder if the pitch should be taught to more players, perhaps including those with injury problems that have slowed their fastballs.
“If you are trying to learn the pitch because you’ve had an injury, it’s too late,” Wood told Fan Nation in 2019. “The knuckleball isn’t something that’s learned overnight. I threw it for years, from when I was in high school. It takes that long to get used to it. What major league organization is going to give a pitcher three or four years to master the pitch?”
In 1968, 1969 and 1970, Wood, still a relief pitcher, was a workhorse with his new knuckler, leading the league in appearances and pitching in more than 75 games each season.
In 1971 the Sox decided to try Wood as a starter, and it resulted in his first of three All-Star selections; he was 22-13 with a 1.91 earned run average and finished third in the voting for the American League Cy Young Award as the league’s best pitcher. After a 24-17 season the next year, he finished second in the voting.
In 1973 he started the team’s opening game. Because the White Sox then had four days off, he started the team’s second game too, and then came back to start Game 5 as well.
In July of that season he started the first game of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. After pitching poorly and being yanked in the first inning he volunteered to start the second game as well (he pitched poorly again).
Wood was OK with the workload. “I’d much rather start on two days’ rest than sit on the darn bench for a week,” he told The New York Times in 1973.
The years from 1971 to 1975 were Wood’s peak. He won 20 or more games in the first four of those seasons, and then pitched enough to have a rare 20-loss season in 1975, while still winning a respectable 16 games.
He was hit by a line drive that broke his kneecap early in the 1976 season and was out for the rest of the year; he never got back to his best form after that.
He left the White Sox after 1978, but there was little interest in him after the poor seasons, and his career ended.
Wood wasn’t Hall of Fame level; 75 percent of the vote is needed for election and he never got more than seven percent. But he did finish with 164 victories.
He was also often overlooked because the teams he pitched for were not especially good; during his peak years the White Sox rarely had a winning record and never made the postseason.
After his baseball career, in an age when good players seldom earned more than the very low six figures, Wood worked for a pharmaceutical company for many years.
Besides his wife, Janet, whom he married in 1991, he is survived by three children from a previous marriage, Wendy Wood-Yang, Derron and Christen Wood Dolloff.
News articles about Wood during his career often emphasized his everyman nature. He never looked like he was in the best of shape, and he never seemed as if he were bowled over by the glory and fame of baseball.
“This is strictly a job,” he said in 1973. “I’m fortunate in that I enjoy what I’m doing.”
Adeel Hassan contributed reporting.
Victor Mather, who has been a reporter and editor at The Times for 25 years, covers sports and breaking news.
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