TORONTO - Call him stubborn. Call him persistent. Call him a freak. Call him reborn.
Or, you can call R.J. Dickey “Cy,” as in Cy Young.
After spending 14 seasons crisscrossing America, clinging to a major-league dream that most anyone would have abandoned long ago, Dickey has, in his fourth decade, re-imagined himself, as they say in the car commercials.
He has already written a book, baring his soul about his unlikely life story: Broken home, sexually abused, star athlete, failed phenom, too good for the minors, not good enough for The Show.
That’s the Coles Notes version of Dickey’s first 32 years. Since 2006, Dickey, now 38, has remade himself into one of the best pitchers in baseball by mastering a knuckleball, the likes of which the game has never seen before.
In that spring of 2006, just about all that was left of that kid phenom who had been the Texas Rangers’ first-round draft choice (18th overall) a decade earlier was a confounding pitch he called “The
