![\"Mr.](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/R2NS6EOHUJFQBFNW4XG44J4NPQ.jpg\")
Mr. Wood (right) and his mentor, Hoyt Wilhelm, offered their grips on their favorite pitch, July 20, 1968, in Chicago.Anonymous\/ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/p>\nWilbur Wood, who threw those 376-plus innings in a strike-shortened 1972 season, was anything but a hurler.<\/p>\n
What he was: a Cambridge-born, Belmont High School-educated, Red Sox draftee turned waiver fodder pudgy master.<\/p>\n
The subject of his mastery: the knuckleball.<\/p>\n
Mr. Wood, who won 164 games and saved 57 in a 17-year major league career, died Saturday in Burlington. The three-time All-Star was 84.<\/p>\n
His death was confirmed by his wife, Janet, according to The New York Times.<\/p>\n
Mr. Wood\u2019s numbers in 1972 for the Chicago White Sox rivaled those of pitchers in the dead-ball era of the early 1900s. His innings were the most since 1917; his 49 games started the most for a pitcher since 1908. Neither will likely be matched any time soon, perhaps never.<\/p>\n
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He would follow that season with another league-leading 359\u2153 innings in 1973, winning 24 games, as he had in 1972. They were the second and third of four straight 20-win seasons for Mr. Wood.<\/p>\n
Like his incongruent numbers, Mr. Wood cut a profile of anything but a stud athlete. <\/p>\n
His White Sox manager Chuck Tanner offered a story to the Globe\u2019s Peter Gammons in 1973 describing Mr. Wood\u2019s everyman appearance. Tanner had invited friends to meet his team, with Mr. Wood at the end of a line of stout, young ballplayers. <\/p>\n
\u201cAfter they shook his hand, I asked them how they liked meeting the best lefthanded pitcher in baseball,\u201d Tanner said. \u201cThey stopped cold. \u2018That was Wilbur Wood?\u2019 They thought it was . . . a janitor.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Mr. Wood, the crack was nothing new. \u201cFalstaff in baseball underdress,\u201d Gammons would describe him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHell,\u201d he told Gammons. \u201cI\u2019ve been fat all my life. I was a fat baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilbur Forrester Wood was born Oct. 22, 1941, to Wilbur Sr. and Svea Wood. His father was a star athlete at Boston University, serving as captain of both the baseball and basketball teams.<\/p>\n
Mr. Wood would also be a standout multisport athlete. He led Belmont High to the Middlesex League football championship as quarterback. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf I had wanted to go to college, I could have gone on a hockey scholarship,\u201d he said. \u201cBut baseball was it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Relying mostly on a curveball, he threw three no-hitters as a junior and led Belmont to a state title. He didn\u2019t lose a game as a senior.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox signed him with a $25,000 offer. He shuffled through several minor league teams, with his curveball remaining his main offering, and the knuckleball more of an afterthought.<\/p>\n
On June 30, 1961, a little more than a year from his high school graduation, he made his Fenway Park debut, mopping up a drubbing delivered by the Cleveland Indians. Still, he was the one thrill of the game for the Fenway faithful, \u201ca scholastic hero when scholastic heroes still were on the front pages of Boston newspapers,\u201d as Gammons wrote.<\/p>\n
That acclaim would not last. He would pitch a little more than 100 innings over the next three-plus seasons with the Sox, not winning one game and losing five. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe littlesonofagun just couldn\u2019t throw hard enough,\u201d the Sox\u2019 Johnny Pesky said, \u201cbut he wanted to pitch and tried his darndest.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was bought by the Pittsburgh Pirates near the end of the 1964 season. After two indistinguished seasons, he was traded at the end of the 1966 season to the White Sox.<\/p>\n
The deal was made near a low point for Mr. Wood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I thought of quitting too seriously then, because I was only 24,\u201d he told the Globe in 1973. \u201cI guess I occasionally thought about going into the plumbing and heating business with my father-in-law, but . . . I always had confidence in myself. I figured I could make it if I got to the right place.\u201d<\/p>\n
The right place, for Mr. Wood, would be Chicago.<\/p>\n
There, two mentors would turn him into one of baseball\u2019s more dominant \u2014 and peculiar \u2014 starting pitchers. One was Johnny Sain, the old Boston Braves star who would eventually become pitching coach for the White Sox. <\/p>\n
\u201cI guess they always said, \u2018Poor Wilbur, he just doesn\u2019t have the natural ability to pitch in the big leagues,\u2019 \u201d Sain told Gammons. \u201cWhat they call \u2018natural ability\u2019 is standing 6-[foot]-4 and being able to throw a ball 100 miles per hour. Wilbur didn\u2019t have the ability. Tools. Well, it turns out he has as much God-given ability as any man I\u2019ve seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had that knuckeball, sure, Sain said. But he had something more important.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has the greatest psychological makeup I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d Sain said. \u201cNothing ever bothers him; he\u2019s the same, win or lose. And throwing that pitch requires the nature of a master surgeon.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other mentor was on the pitching staff: longtime knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm. Near the end of his Hall of Fame career, Wilhelm took Mr. Wood under his soft-tossing wing.<\/p>\n
He encouraged him to throw the knuckler more overhand, rather than with a three-quarters delivery, from which Mr. Wood struggled to control the pitch. And he offered something less tangible but equally important: Believe in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou either throw the knuckleball all of the time or not at all. It\u2019s not an extra pitch,\u201d Wilhelm said he told Mr. Wood, according to the Boston Herald.<\/p>\n
Mr. Wood (right) and his mentor, Hoyt Wilhelm, offered their grips on their favorite pitch, July 20, 1968, in Chicago.Anonymous\/ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/p>\n
The change paid dividends almost immediately. <\/p>\n
Mr. Wood would become the workhorse of the White Sox bullpen, leading the league in games in 1968, 1969, and 1970, and earning 52 saves over those seasons.<\/p>\n
In 1971, he became a starting pitcher. He won 22 games that year, with a microscopic 1.91 ERA. He finished third in the voting for the AL Cy Young Award, which went to the A\u2019s Vida Blue. The next year, he finished second to Cleveland\u2019s Gaylord Perry.<\/p>\n
Few matched his win totals, even for a very average Chicago team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think maybe there was some stigma to the pitch,\u201d he said. \u201cI guess I had to convince people a knuckleball win is as good as a fastball win.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1973, he started the team\u2019s opening game. Because the White Sox then had four days off, he started the second game too, then came back to start Game 5 as well.<\/p>\n
In July of that season, he started the first game of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. After pitching poorly and being yanked in the first inning, he volunteered and started the second as well.<\/p>\n
Mr. Wood was OK with the workload.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d much rather start on two days\u2019 rest than sit on the darn bench for a week,\u201d he told The New York Times in 1973.<\/p>\n
Besides his wife, Janet, whom he married in 1991, he leaves three children from a previous marriage, Wendy Wood-Yang, Derron, and Christen Wood Dolloff.<\/p>\n
Even in his All-Star years, Mr. Wood would return to his roots in the Boston area, working as a plumber and seeking out times to go fishing.<\/p>\n
He told Gammons about talking baseball with an old pal, Bob Locker of the Cubs. But the conversation was cut short when it shifted away from the 60-feet, 6 inches from the rubber to home plate.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants to know what bobber I use,\u201d Mr. Wood said. \u201cI told him, \u2018Hell, I\u2019ll talk pitching, but I ain\u2019t giving any fishing secrets away.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Mr.](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/HQAO62ACNQI6FHPLOU33UAFZWY.jpg\")
Mr. Wood (left) joined other legendary knuckleballers Phil Niekro, Tim Wakefield, and Charlie Hough during a ceremony announcing the premiere of the documentary film “Knuckleball!” at Boston City Hall in September of 2012. Charles Krupa<\/p>\n
Material from The New York Times was included in this obituary.<\/p>\n