What happens when everything you’ve worked for suddenly begins to disappear?

R.A. Dickey entered professional baseball as a highly touted first-round draft pick, only to discover that he had been born without a crucial ligament in his pitching elbow. What followed were years of struggles, minor-league assignments, uncertainty, and a career that seemed destined to end quietly.

But Dickey refused to let baseball decide his story.He reinvented himself by embracing one of the game’s most mysterious pitches—the knuckleball. After years of failure and perseverance, Dickey eventually accomplished the unimaginable. 

At 37 years old, he won 20 games for the New York Mets and became the first knuckleballer ever to win the Cy Young Award.On this episode of A Sports Love Affair: Incredible Stories, we tell the remarkable story of R.A. Dickey—a man who lost the career he thought he was going to have and somehow built an even better one.