AKA (TO ME) AS BOKE KNUCKLEMANN!
Dick Bokelmann was Boke Knucklemann! When I was a kid, I tried writing fictional action stories and I always used real people as models for my heroes and main characters. That’s how former Buffs pitcher Dick Bokelmann got to be “Boke Knucklemann.” It happened during the red hot Houston Buffs championship season of 1951. Even though I only wrote for my eyes only, I somehow picked up on the idea that a writer couldn’t use an actual name of a real person in his writings, but that changing the name enough to capture the model’s identity without using his actual name made it OK.
Like his real life namesake, Knucklemann pitched for the Buffs, but when he wasn’t pitching, he was fighting crime on the streets of Houston – knocking out bank robbers with knuckle balls that he carried with him in a bag as his weapon of choice. Well, they weren’t exactly knuckle balls while they were still in the bag, but that’s what they were destined to become – once the good guy “Bokeymann” got through throwing them.
Boke would run up on a robber coming out of a bank with his gun in one hand and his bag of loot in the other. Boke always stopped running toward his man once he got about 60′ 6″ away and then stare him down to a frightened halt. Then he would reach into his ball bag and pull out a weapon that he unleashed as a knuckler, one invariably heading straight for the robber’s face.
Long before Cassius Clay ever thought of it, these pitches of Boke Knucklemann carried with them the powers to both “dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” I always tried to convey these ideas in my 13-year old descriptions of all those “good rallies past evil” moments of final redemption. Although I burned or threw away all my original stories long ago, the big moment always went something like this:
“Gypsy Joe Stalinovich stalled in the doorway of the First National Bank on Main Street as he saw the athletic figure of Boke Knucklemann racing toward him. As Boke stopped some short distance away, Gypsy Joe also froze, with his gun in the left hand and his bag of loot in the right. Coming toward him hard was a bobbing, weaving baseball, which his eyes attempted to closely follow in flight. Suddenly, with his peepers now crossed in locked tracking mode on the incoming white meteor, there’s a loud SPLAT sound as Joe takes it right between the baby blues! – Cartoon butterflies encircle the evil Gypsy Joe’s injured cranium as he falls face flat forward to the pavement for one of the easiest robbery arrests in HPD history. Gypsy Joe’s message is one he’d like to pass on to all other mean and evil Houston crooks: ‘The Bokeymann will get you if you don’t watch out!'”
So, folks, I got a lot out of watching Houston Buffs baseball back in the day, and, thankfully, I was realistic enough back then to spare the public my adolescent storytelling efforts. The point of sharing that literary history with you now is simply to make this point: Those guys weren’t merely my baseball heroes. They also were my inspiration for heroic central casting and my writing character models.
The real Dick Bokelmann was a good enough pitcher in reality to actually need no additional superhero alter ego. As a knuckle balling reliever for the 1951 Houston Buffs in 27 of the 30 games he worked, Bokie won 10 and lost 2 as he complied an incredible ERA of 0.74 over 85 innings of work.
Born 10/26/26 in Arlington Heights, Illinois, the recently turned 83-year old Dick Bokelmann posted a career minor league mark of 66-51, with a 3.21 ERA, from 1947-54. He spent four partial years with the Buffs (1950-53) while spending part of that same time with the parent club St. Louis Cardinals (1951-53). Bokie’s Cardinals/Big League mark was 3-4 with a 4.90 ERA.
It is also true that it was two men, Houston Buff knuckleballers Al Papai and Dick Bokelmann, who prepared me to be a fan of Joe and Phil Niekro a few years later. It was an easy jump to make. I don’t think I’ve ever met a knuckleballer that I didn’t really like.Every one of them has been a remarkably individual and high integrity human being.
Tags: Baseball, Houston Buffs, St. Louis Cardinals
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