R. A. Dickey

Robert Allen “R. A.” Dickey was a major league pitcher who also won a bronze medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics with the USA team. Dickey played in college at the University of Tennessee. He had been drafted in the 10th round of the 1993 Major League Baseball draft but did not sign, instead playing with the Volunteers for three seasons. In 1996 was again drafted in the MLB draft, this time in the first round by the Texas Rangers.

Dickey had a long MLB career, playing from 2001-17, after starting out in the minors for a few seasons. He was not a power pitcher, relying on a forkball and later in his career a knuckleball, but he was effective. Dickey played for the Rangers from 2001-06, but later bounced around a bit. He played for the Seattle Mariners (2008), Minnesota Twins (2009), New York Mets (2010-12), Toronto Blue Jays (2013-16), and finished up with the Atlanta Braves in 2017.

Dickey’s best year by far was 2012 when he won the NL Cy Young Award, led the National League in strikeouts, and made the All-Star team. That year he threw two consecutive one-hitters, striking out 12 or more in both games, becoming only the third MLB pitcher, after Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan, to do that in one season, but the only pitcher in Major League history to do that consecutively. He also had a streak of 32 2/3 scoreless innings in 2012.

R. A. Dickey was a studious type who had majored in English literature at Tennessee, read voluminously, and said if he had not played major league ball, he would have wanted to be an English professor. In the off-season between 2011-12 he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro as a charitable effort, raising moneys for victims of human trafficking in India, a charity named the Bombay Teen Challenge. He also started the Honoring the Father Ministries in Florida that brings medical supplies, food, and baseball equipment to impoverished Latin American children.