The Knuckleballer: R.A. Dickey finds his perfect pitch

The following script is from "The Knuckleballer" which aired on April 14, 2013. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Rich Bonin, producer.

Last year R.A. Dickey won baseball's Cy Young Award, making him the National League's number one pitcher. What's astonishing is that he won the award as a knuckleballer, something no other knuckleballer has ever done.

An umpire once described the pitch as something hitters can't hit, coaches can't coach and pitchers can't control. What's unique about Dickey is that he's managed not only to control it -- much of the time -- he's off to a rocky start this year, but he also puts some sauce and speed on it.

Dickey has had a challenging life. He was abused as a child and once he got into baseball, he moved around as a journeyman in the minors for most of 14 years before he perfected the knuckleball. Then last year at age 37, when most players have already retired, he had the season of his life.

Lesley Stahl: You had 20 wins, 11 in a row.

R.A. Dickey: Yeah.

Lesley Stahl: I mean, that's pretty unheard of for any pitcher, forget a knuckleballer.

R.A. Dickey: Well, let's just say I was enjoying coming to the park. It was fun coming to the park.

Lesley Stahl: You're living your dream.

R.A. Dickey: Yeah, it was a magical year for me.

And he did it almost exclusively with the knuckleball, which he throws 90 percent of the time. Curve balls curve, cutters cut. The knuckleball? It bobbles, it dips and dances so much that it's hard to catch.

Lesley Stahl: Could you show us the difference between the fastball and the knuckleball - what the motion looks like?

R.A. Dickey: Yeah, sure. Be glad to.

This is the fastball: see how it spins all the way to the catcher's mitt.

Now watch the near total absence of spin in R.A.'s knuckleball. From the time the ball leaves his hand it rotates a mere quarter of one revolution. It's a pitch that's devilishly hard to control.

Lesley Stahl: Why do they even call it a knuckleball?

R.A. Dickey: When you see the ball coming at you see- the hitter sees your knuckles and it's different than any other pitch thrown. You for sure throw it with your fingernails.

Lesley Stahl: So with other pitchers there are "tells." And the batter knows that right before so and so throws a fastball he scratches his ear or whatever. But it doesn't matter with you, right? They all know you're going to throw the knuckleball.

R.A. Dickey: They know what they're getting. I know what I'm throwing. It's just a matter of, "Can I throw a good one?"

When he does throw a good one, its trajectory is so unpredictable, it's one of the hardest pitches to hit.

[Announcer #1: Oh, look at that.

Announcer #2: Jeez.

Announcer #1: What are you going to do with that?!]

Some batters are hypnotized by it. Others lose their balance or their bats.

[Announcer #1: And Utley loses the bat going after that knuckleball!]

Video courtesy of Major League Baseball

Lesley Stahl: It floats. It flits. Aerodynamics professors, they don't even know for sure what's going on with the air currents and all of that.

R.A. Dickey: Yeah, well that means that it's magic.

[Announcer #1: 14:28:05 That one shimmied.

Announcer #2: It's like oscillating back and forth.]

R.A. Dickey: If I throw a bad knuckleball, you could hit it. If I throw a good knuckleball--

Lesley Stahl: You can't hit it--

R.A. Dickey: Nobody--

Lesley Stahl: --and there's nothing in-between--

R.A. Dickey: Nobody's hitting it-- yeah, nobody's hitting it.

Lesley Stahl: Well, have you ever hit off of a knuckleballer yourself?

R.A. Dickey: No. Only in a video game. I've never - I mean, because I'm the only one left.

He's the only one throwing the knuckleball in the big leagues today. And the one who's put the pitch on the map.

His season last year with the New York Mets was one for the books - and the fans loved him. So it came as a shocker in December when the team decided to trade him.

R.A. Dickey: I don't think I was hurt as much as I just was sad about it because that is the place that I came to redeem my career...in a lot of ways, well, in every way really. I had finally had a parking place you know. Which took me, what 14 years to get a parking place?

Lesley Stahl: You have to say to yourself: What do I have to do? I won the Cy Young Award. What did they want from me?

R.A Dickey: Yeah, I certainly had that conversation with myself and my agent.

He was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays who signed R.A. for three years and $30 million, all guaranteed...not bad for a country boy from the poor side of Nashville.

Lesley Stahl: So this is the house where you grew up?

R.A. Dickey: Yeah, right here, 247.

He had a lonely and difficult childhood here...with his mother, an alcoholic, who worked several jobs to make ends meet.

Lesley Stahl: So she was a single mom. Your dad didn't help?

R.A Dickey: You know, my dad moved out when I was little. Seven or so.

Lesley Stahl: You saw things that were hard with your mother?

R.A. Dickey: Alcohol was prevalent. There were confrontations. There was -- ya know, my mom fell asleep at night when I might need her on the couch. Or, you know, things like that. Just-- it was hard.

But the real darkness of his childhood started when he was 8 and left in the care of a babysitter. All he wanted to do was watch cartoons. But she led him upstairs into the bedroom.

Resources for sexual abuse victims from R.A. Dickey

R.A. Dickey: The word that I would use to describe being abused by the babysitter is confused, not knowing at all how to process it, scared to death, because here was a caretaker committing this act.

Lesley Stahl: And it happened more than once?

R.A. Dickey: It happened over that summer about, I'd say about four times.

Lesley Stahl: And you didn't tell anybody?

R.A. Dickey: No, because there's a part of it that feels so wicked. You feel like you've been a part of it in some way. And so you don't say anything, at least I don't. I didn't.

Lesley Stahl: You didn't.

R.A. Dickey: And that was a mistake.

But the babysitter abuse was only the prelude. Later that year, he was playing near a rundown garage - when a stranger - a male this time, raped him.

R.A. Dickey: It was so much more physical, you know. It was a strong man, like holding you down kind of stuff, it wasn't-- it was just really awful.

Lesley Stahl: You're still 8?

R.A. Dickey: I'm 8 years old. But I'll never forget knowing what was fixing to happen to me. And just wanting it to be over with and going, just going limp, like-

Lesley Stahl: And giving - submitting -

R.A. Dickey: Giving up, like giving into it. And I think I had a lot of shame about that.

Lesley Stahl: What is the shame, if you're the abused one?

R.A. Dickey: The shame is that you didn't speak up, that you didn't have a voice, that you were in that position to begin with, that you didn't run away, that you in some way might have invited it. There's all kinds of things that play tricks on your mind.

He says he buried all that shame, all his secrets...but it turned him into a kid who was full of anger. His one outlet was sports. He was a gifted athlete, and that proved to be his ticket out.

R.A. Dickey: This is a pretty special place. It was for me.

When he was 13, he was admitted to one of Nashville's top prep schools on a full scholarship. This is where he found structure and discipline and met a classmate's sister, Anne, who he proposed to back then.

Anne Dickey: You know a 12-year-old girl doesn't forget that! I don't know if-

R.A. Dickey: I pulled out my ace, right at the beginning. Here's my ace card.

Lesley Stahl: Here's my ace. You proposed at 13--

Anne Dickey: I know. I don't know what I really thought of it. I probably was like, "Ooh, this is crazy."

They waited 'til after his junior year in college when the Texas Rangers made him the team's number-one draft choice, with a signing bonus of $810,000. But before he signed on the dotted line, the team's trainer saw this photograph of Dickey on the 1996 U.S. Olympics team and thought that his throwing arm was bent at a funny angle. So, he sent R.A. for an MRI that found---

R.A. Dickey: I didn't have the existence of an ulnar collateral ligament in my right elbow, which is the ligament that holds the elbow together.

Lesley Stahl: The Texas Rangers said, "Without the ligament, we don't want you."

R.A Dickey: I was sitting across from the general manager of the Rangers and he said, "You know, we don't think we want to sign you now." And it was all I could do. It took a supernatural peace to-- for me to not to leap over the desk and pummel him.

Eventually the Rangers offered him a contract, but for a lot less money: only $75,000. He started out as a classic fastball pitcher. But he kept flopping on the big league mound and being sent back to the minors.

Lesley Stahl: You'd be great in the minors. And they'd call you up and then you'd get into the big leagues and boom.

R.A. Dickey: Yeah, no, that's-- you're right.

Lesley Stahl: Everyone's hitting home runs off of you.

R.A. Dickey: Yeah, thanks for reminding me.

Anne Dickey: Yeah, that one year.

In the first 10 years of his career, he spent all but two seasons in the minors, earning as little as $11,000 a year, and dragging his wife and their growing family from one minor league town to the next.

Lesley Stahl: It's kind of a stunning thing that you just didn't say to him one day: "Come on, this is it. We have children now. It's enough."

Anne Dickey: I think I was just as stubborn as he was. You know-- just we'd given up a lot. And why stop now? And "Let's see what-- let's ride it out until somebody kicks us off the field."

That time came in 2005 when his fastball began to lose steam and Orel Hershiser, then the Rangers' pitching coach, called him in to a meeting and told him--

R.A. Dickey: I wasn't good enough. And if I was ever gonna make it, I had to do something different.

Lesley Stahl: So the word knuckleball comes out of Oral Hershiser's mouth at you and you think?

R.A. Dickey: The first emotion I had was, "Are they telling me that what I've done for 15 years, 20 years of my life isn't good enough anymore?" And that's a hard pill to swallow.

But it was an ultimatum: the knuckleball or you're out. So he stayed in AAA and had to teach himself the pitch, since there was no coach in the majors who knew how to throw it. He finally got to show it off in 2006, in a game against the Detroit Tigers.

R.A. Dickey: You know, I had all these hopes that came with this pitch of rejuvenation and, you know, redemption. And then I tie a modern day major league record for the most home runs given up in a game. Yeah.

Lesley Stahl: Not a game, a couple of innings, huh?

R.A. Dickey: Three and two-thirds innings.

[Announcer: Here's the pitch and Shelton rips one to the left. Gone! And that's going to be it for R.A. Dickey.]

R.A. Dickey: Six home runs. Yeah. And that was-- that was devastating to say the least.

Devastating, and the beginning of a long slide down, on the diamond, and in his soul. He felt inadequate and angry, and his marriage was in trouble: Anne caught him cheating, and he got depressed. So he went into therapy which naturally led right back to the childhood abuse.

R.A. Dickey: It was the first time that I'd ever kind of gone back and connected with that boy, you know. And I don't cry very much, Lesley, but I cried. And it was hard. But I enjoyed it. I started to enjoy risking that, because I felt like I was being freed up in some way.

He invited his wife to join him in therapy, and told her for the first time about the abuse.

Lesley Stahl: You had no idea?

Anne Dickey: Yeah. I used to say, "Well, how come you didn't trust me?" You know? And, and he'd say, "I didn't trust anybody, you know? I didn't trust anybody."

He says the therapy, along with his Christian faith, helped turn his life around at home and at the ballpark. He was able to concentrate almost obsessively on his pitch over the next two years, he threw the knuckleball thousands of times, and when he wasn't throwing the ball, he was gripping it, even as he drove.

Lesley Stahl: Do you think that if you hadn't had the breakthrough in therapy that you would have had the one in baseball?

R.A. Dickey: No, I think they had to happen simultaneously.

He says he became a more attentive father of his four children and a better husband. He recently reconciled with his mother, who is now sober.

And he's become involved in a Christian charity in India that tries to save children and young women who've been trafficked in the sex trade. In January, he went to Mumbai to raise awareness of the charity.

[R.A. Dickey: Hello, nice to meet you.]

One of the prostitutes approached R.A. and the founder of the charity.

R.A. Dickey: She came up and said that her life was already ruined, but could you take my child. And this woman was 25 years old. To think that there is a woman that's 25 years old that thinks that her life is over. "Would you just take my daughter, please?"

Lesley Stahl: But you understand?

R.A. Dickey: Oh yeah, I completely understand.

The charity is now providing counseling and health care for the woman and her daughter. R.A. has raised over $130,000 for the group, Bombay Teen Challenge, which used the money to open this health clinic.

He says he's a new man: liberated and reborn. And yet he had a disastrous outing last Sunday when he broke a fingernail in the first inning against the Red Sox.

[Announcer: Not the way R.A. Dickey wanted to start his Blue Jays career.]

A broken nail can derail a knuckleballer, but R.A. knows the season is long, and like his pitch, full of zigs and zags -- ups and downs.