Baseball lost one of its most durable and unconventional arms this weekend with the death of Wilbur Wood, a former major league knuckleballer whose workload and longevity remain unmatched in the modern game. He was 84.
According to the New York Post, Wood died Saturday at a hospital in Burlington, Massachusetts. His passing closes the book on a 17-year MLB career defined by resilience, reinvention, and an almost unthinkable number of innings.
Best remembered for his 12 seasons with the Chicago White Sox, Wood also spent time with the Boston Red Sox and Pittsburgh Pirates.
Over the course of his career, he led the major leagues twice in games pitched and four times in games started, carving out a reputation as a pitcher who never stopped taking the ball.
His most astonishing season came in 1972. That year, Wood threw 376⅔ innings for the White Sox, the most by any pitcher since 1917. He also made 49 starts, the highest total since 1908. Both feats remain untouched more than five decades later, standing as a testament to an era — and a pitcher — unlikely to be repeated.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wood grew up starring at Belmont High School before beginning his professional journey. He made his major league debut at just 19 years old in 1961 with the Red Sox, flashing promise but not overwhelming velocity.
“He was a real hot-shot pitcher,” Roland Hemond, the former Sox executive who was then a minor-league director for the Milwaukee Braves, told the Chicago Tribune.
Hemmend recalled first seeing Wood shortly after high school.
“He was a fuzzy-faced, chubby little guy who didn’t throw very hard,” Hemond said. “I watched him throw batting practice, but I couldn’t get very excited about him.”
That early skepticism would later give way to admiration, particularly after Wood fully embraced the knuckleball. Though he had toyed with the pitch earlier, his transformation came after arriving in Chicago, where he learned from knuckleball master Hoyt Wilhelm.
“I was lucky because when I came to the Sox, Hoyt Wilhelm was still with them — probably the greatest knuckleball pitcher of all,” Wood said, per the Tribune. “He told me if I was going to throw the knuckleball, I should junk the rest of my pitches.”
“I had nothing to lose,” Wood added.
The change paid off. Wood became a three-time American League All-Star, posted four 20-win seasons, and finished his career with a 164–156 record between 1961 and 1978.
After retiring from baseball, Wood went on to work at a pharmaceutical company, leaving behind a legacy built on endurance, adaptability, and one dancing pitch that kept hitters guessing for nearly two decades.
