Rykoff: “Knuckleball!” documentary about life more than sport
From Amanda Rykoff at espnW on September 18, 2012:
Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern didn’t know much about baseball before the 2011 major league season. The co-directors of the documentary “Knuckleball!” had different views of the pitch that would be the centerpiece of their film.
“I knew only that it was a disparaged pitch,” Sundberg said. “My husband’s old friend from college had nothing good to say about the knuckleball, so that’s all I knew. It has a lot to do with this idea that it’s not a real pitch, that it shouldn’t be held up to the same effect as some of the other pitches like the curveball or fastball.”
“I walked into my kitchen and told my kids about making a film about Tim Wakefield and knuckleball pitchers, and my kids picked up apples and started knuckling them around the kitchen,” Stern said. “They were New York City kids who grew up as Red Sox fans and so they had to be very strong in their convictions, and they love Tim Wakefield and the knuckleball, so their reaction was, ‘Woohoo let’s do it!'”
Despite their lack of familiarity with the subject, the two women, best known for their Emmy-nominated documentary films “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” and “The Devil Came On Horseback” (about the genocide in Darfur) jumped at the chance to bring the story of the controversial, oft-misunderstood pitch that has baffled batters and catchers for decades to the big screen.
Read the full article here: http://espn.go.com/espnw/more-sports/8390055/espnw-knuckleball-baseball-documentary-life-more-sport
Related link: To view show times and locations for “Knuckleball!”, or to purchase the movie on iTunes or other outlets, visit http://www.knuckleballmovie.com.
Originally published: September 18, 2012. Last Updated: September 18, 2012.