Sitting in his office at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Duquette made a case for developing more knuckleballers.

“I’m not sure why there aren’t more out there, because every time you throw the pitch, you have a chance to get an out,” he said. “Look at the money the industry spends on conventional pitchers, and most of them end up on the disabled list, not even working. You’re not putting as much stress on your shoulder because you’re trying to get the ball to float, not throw it past the backstop.”

He added: “About half our players are pitchers on a given team. Why not knuckleballers — why not? Our goal is to have them pitch until they collect Social Security, or at least their major league pension.”

To tutor Wakefield, Duquette once hired Niekro and his brother Joe, another knuckleballer. Wakefield consulted with Charlie Hough, who had recently retired, and Tom Candiotti, who was also learning the pitch. And when Dickey began to focus on the knuckleball, first with Texas and then with the Seattle Mariners and the Minnesota Twins, he sought out Wakefield.

Wakefield, who retired with 200 wins, now works as a Red Sox broadcaster while advising Haeger, 29, and another knuckleballer, Steven Wright, 28. Haeger and Wright adopted the pitch on their own, as members of other organizations.

Despite Duquette’s and Showalter’s pivotal roles in developing the major leagues’ two most recent successful knuckleballers — Wakefield and Dickey, who now pitches for the Toronto Blue Jays — coincidence rather than design underlies the Orioles’ approach.

In June 2012, Staniewicz, then an inspector of cargo planes at Pope Field near Fayetteville, N.C., visited Camden Yards to be honored as a member of a military all-star team. At the batting cage before the Orioles played, Staniewicz told Duquette that he had developed a knuckleball. Duquette urged him to work on it.