As George Herman Ruth, Jimmie Foxx and even Tyrus Raymond Cobb could tell you, this wouldn't be the first year in baseball history when every time you looked up, it's seemed as if a position player was trudging toward the old pitcher's mound.

But now that we've got that out of the way ...

There has never, ever been a season like this in mystery-pitcher history.

And trust me: As America's foremost demented authority on position players who show up on a mound near you, I can assure you this is shaping up as one of those seasons for the ages.

Oh, not necessarily the golden ages. But whatever. History is history. And here's what we've seen already this year:

And three teams -- the Dodgers, Tigers and Brewers -- have already used position players to pitch in multiple games. That hadn't happened this early in a season since 1989.

We'd gone 22 consecutive seasons (since Doug Dascenzo in 1991) without seeing any position player pitch twice in the same week. Then, of course, it happened this year two weeks in a row , thanks to the special-pitching-guest-star exploits of the Dodgers' Drew Butera and then the Tigers' Danny Worth .

In fact, there has been only one year in that expansion era in which more than 12 position players pitched all season . (And that was last year, when it happened 14 times.)

We're up to 12 different pitching appearances by men who normally don't pitch for a living, by far the most before this date in the expansion era (1961 to present).

So, obviously, something is happening here. The question is: Um, what exactly? Is it a coincidence? A unique confluence of ugly events? Or possibly even (gasp) a trend?

"Oh, I doubt that it's a trend," said Tigers manager Brad Ausmus, a man who never envisioned going this route twice in the first two months of his managerial career. "I don't want to spoil your piece or anything, but I certainly don't think it's a growing trend. I definitely hope it's not a growing trend in Detroit, anyway."

But Brewers manager Ron Roenicke isn't so sure of that. Even in an age of 13-man pitching staffs, he said, you "have to do what you have to do" to get your team's actual pitchers through the season without starting a parade to the fabled door of Dr. James Andrews.

"I just think it's a time where we're doing what we can to protect pitchers more," Roenicke said. "The medical staffs get involved now, because of all the injuries to pitchers. We're not happy about all the Tommy John surgeries. So we're counting pitches. We're watching innings. And your biggest fear as a manager is pitching somebody too much and having him get hurt. So I think this is just a sign we're protecting pitchers more than ever."

Well, whatever it's a sign of, it's provided us with some rollicking entertainment in a bunch of otherwise forgettable games this year. And since I've already established that I'm a hopeless fan of this sort of rollicking entertainment, I've talked to several of the men who provided it.

So here it comes, the ultimate look at the Mystery Pitcher Epidemic of 2014:

The Knuckleball King

Danny Worth never set out to become an honorary member of the Niekro family. It just happened. Fortunately for all of us knuckleball fans.

When he was a kid, he said, he used to throw and catch bullpen sessions with his dad, who "pitched a little," had a mean knuckleball himself and eventually taught it to his son. Little did his father know ...

All these years later, his boy would make him proud by stomping into a May 22 Tigers-Rangers blowout and unfurling a knuckleball that danced like Maksim Chmerkovskiy.

Danny Worth and his dancing knuckleball appeared in not one, but two games last month. Mark Cunningham/MLB Photos via Getty Images

Worth fluttered 19 knuckleballs up there that day -- and only one of them got put in play. Which was almost as mind-boggling as the fact that the Rangers swung and missed at five of them, which computes to a whiff rate of 26.3 percent. Just to put that in perspective, the whiff rate against R.A. Dickey's knuckleball in the year he won the Cy Young (2012) was 14.7 percent. So there. Got your attention yet?

Well, that might have been the day that the legend of Worth's knuckleball was born across America. But in Detroit, it's been a hot topic for years.

"I'm always throwing it, and guys on our team are always talking about it," Worth said. "In fact, [Max] Scherzer and [Justin] Verlander want me to give up my position-player career and become a pitcher. No joke. They think it would be a good career move."

Just for the record, that's not a career move Worth is ready to make at age 28. But he has to admit his amazing mound debut was a lot more electrifying than your average day in the life of a utility man. Especially when the crowd at Comerica Park started treating him like, well, Scherzer and Verlander.

"At first," Worth said, "I don't think they knew I was throwing a knuckleball. I think they thought I was lobbing balls up there at 68 miles an hour. But by the last batter, they were really getting into it. They were on their feet, chanting my name. It was one of my coolest moments in baseball."

When Worth flipped one last knuckler past Leonys Martin for his second strikeout of the ninth inning, it made him just the second position-player pitcher in the expansion era to rack up two strikeouts in an outing in which he faced no more than four hitters. The other, according to Baseball-Reference.com, was Greg Gross, who did it way back on June 8, 1986. Pretty cool.

"All the guys I faced talked to me the next day," Worth reported. "They were laughing, saying how nasty that pitch was. Martin [who took a 3-2 knuckler for strike three] said, 'I was either going to walk or strike out, because I knew I couldn't hit it.'"

So there you go. He was officially unhittable. But one Ranger he didn't get to face -- not until his second appearance two days later, anyway -- was his old college summer-league teammate, Mitch Moreland. And there's a story behind that.

"My coach that summer wouldn't let me pitch, but he did let Mitch pitch," Worth said, the mock frustration over that "affront" welling up in his voice. "Mitch was our 3-hole hitter and our go-to guy in the bullpen. When I heard he hit 94-95 [mph] on the gun the time he pitched this year [more on that momentarily], I said, 'I believe it dude. He was one of the best pitchers on our team.'"

But his admiration for Moreland's work didn't stop Worth from "begging my coach all summer" to let him toss up a few knuckleballs, too. Then again, he laughed, "I begged every coach I ever had."

OK, epilogue time: Two days after his spectacular pitching debut, Worth had to go back out there for yet a second appearance against Texas, in an 11-1 game, even though his fingertips were still "pretty sore" from the first outing. That one didn't go so hot, we regret to announce (3 hits, 1 run, 16 knucklers, just one swing-and-miss). But the good news is he did get Moreland to bounce to first for the final out.

"I was just happy to ground out," Moreland told us. "I was afraid he was going to strike me out."

Return of the closer

Back in another time and another place, it was no shock to find Mitch Moreland on anybody's mound. Back at Mississippi State, in 2005-07, he split his time as a part-time masher, part-time closer. And by his own admission, more big league teams thought his future was as a pitcher, not a first baseman.

"Scouts were always asking me whether I wanted to pitch or hit," Moreland said. "And I just said, 'I want to play.' I loved both. I still do."

So while 12-1 wipeouts don't normally make many dreams come true, the Rangers' ugly May 6 loss in Denver turned into one of Moreland's favorite days ever in the big leagues.

Former Mississippi State closer Mitch Moreland touched 93 mph with his fastball and retired the Rockies in order on May 6. AP Photo/David Zalubowski

How about this for a claim to fame in your pitching debut: He became the first position player ever to throw a 1-2-3 inning at Coors Field, and the first visiting position player to even put up a scoreless inning at Coors since Gary Gaetti did it on July 24, 1998. And this was after the regular pitchers had just coughed up 21 hits and 12 runs.

Oh, and did we mention he hit 95 miles per hour on the gun, according to Pitch f/x? Much to the amusement of his teammates, who'd been egging him on to light up the local radar board.

"All the position players wanted to see what [speed] I could throw," Moreland said. "They were all looking at me like, 'Let one go. Let one go.' So I'll admit I tried to do that a couple of times, just to see if I could still get it up there."

Moreland also admitted that he sneaked a peek at the radar board himself after giving up a fly ball by Jordan Pacheco to right field, where you can just happen to find those MPH readings at Coors.

"He hit it to right field, and I looked up real quick," Moreland said with a chuckle, "so it didn't look like I was dying to see what [the speed] was. I saw '93,' and I said, 'I've still got it.'"

He'd been bugging his manager, Ron Washington, for a chance to do this "from day one," he said. But you know what his reward was for spinning that epic 1-2-3 inning at Coors? He got fined by his teammates in Kangaroo Court. What else?

"We were doing our Kangaroo Court, and [Joakim] Soria said to me, 'You're in the box,'" Moreland reported. "I said, 'What for?' And he said, 'You threw harder than the closer. You threw harder than me.'"

Like father, like son

Only one father-son position-player combination in history has ever done what Drew Butera and his dad, Sal, have done: pitch in an actual big league baseball game. (The Boone family can eat its heart out.)

And now the Buteras can say they've each done it for two different teams.

Sal threw hitless innings in two different appearances, for the 1985 Expos and 1986 Reds. Drew continued that proud family hitless streak for the 2012 Twins. And then, on May 13, with the Dodgers trailing the Marlins 13-2 in the ninth, it was once again Butera time.

Drew Butera made a pair of appearances last month, his four-seam fastball topping out at 94 mph. Christian Petersen/Getty Images

He spun off a perfect ninth inning, finishing it off by punching out Marcell Ozuna with 94 mph smoke. And you might think that somewhere, his dad was beaming. Uh, guess again. He got back to the clubhouse and found a text from his father that congratulated him on whiffing Ozuna, but then said: "You looked like a pitcher hitting." Hey, what's up with that?

OK, so the guy had struck out the inning before as a pinch hitter. Give him a break, considering the circumstances.

"I was so nervous," Butera said. "I was so caught up in the fact that I was pitching, I honestly don't remember my at-bat. But put it this way: It wasn't a very good AB."

The nerves did melt away after he threw his first pitch. But we should report he'd had a long, long wait to fire that pitch -- since his manager, Don Mattingly, had told him he was working the ninth five innings earlier, after the Dodgers had fallen behind 12-zip in the fourth.

"I told Donnie afterward, 'Hey, next time, tell me later in the game,'" Butera laughed. "I had way too much time to get nervous."

Butera mostly threw a bunch of 86-88 mph fastballs, mixed in with a few changeups. But two of those changeups were clocked so slow (74 mph) that Pitch f/x originally recorded them as knuckleballs.

"I think they must have put down 'knuckleball,' because I threw a changeup to Ozuna that moved pretty good," Butera said. "I wouldn't say it dropped off the table, because I don't have that kind of stuff. But it did move. Maybe gravity took it down."

Just for the record, Butera doesn't have a Worth-esque knuckleball in his repertoire. "But if I get to be in a video game and throw a knuckleball," he quipped, "I'll take it."