New Knucksie

Famous Braves knuckleballers:

PHIL NIEKRO

JOE NIEKRO

LANCE NIEKRO

Wait... what??

Kris from Cards in the Attic gave me the heads up on the Braves signing of Lance Niekro last night. I figured they were looking for some Triple-A depth at first base or something now that Thor's gone. What I did not expect was that they signed him as a pitcher. Lance has been out of baseball for a while now and is trying to return as a knuckleballer. He learned the pitch from his pop Joe, and Phil will be working with him in Spring Training to see if he can make it in the bigs. Wakefield ain't gonna be around forever, we need some more knuckleballers in the league! Lance is 30 however, so he will only be able to look forward to a 17 or 18 year career if he is able to pitch in the bigs.

In other news, Frank Wren is pissed.

John Schuerholz is REALLY pissed. Pissed enough to ban Furcal's agency for life.

Arn Tellem, gentleman that he is, left one last parting "fuck you" to the Braves as he prepares to try to use some other poor schmuck to get more money for Randy Wolf.

Ugh.

Well there's one silver lining to all this, I don't have to be obsessively refreshing MLBTradeRumors.com for a while because for the first time in months the Braves aren't deep in the chase for a player. I don't know what I'll do with myself in the meantime.