Phil Niekro Marquee Hall of Fame 1997

The knuckleball let him pitch until he was forty-eight and made catchers miserable. Over twenty-four seasons he won 318 games, lost 274, struck out 3,342 and worked 5,404 innings. The strikeout total is thirteenth all-time and the loss total fifth — what happens to a pitcher nobody takes out of a game.

He led the National League in wins in 1974 and 1979 and in strikeouts in 1977, and he won five Gold Gloves. In 1979 he finished 21-20, winning twenty and losing twenty in the same season, which no pitcher has done since. Atlanta gave him bad teams for most of two decades and he pitched anyway.

His three hundredth win came in 1985, at forty-six, in a Yankee uniform, and he pitched two more years after it. His brother Joe won 221 games, giving the two of them 539 between them. The writers elected him in 1997, on his fifth appearance on the ballot, with 380 votes of 473.