Mets’ Dickey joins ‘Jedi’ with 12th winner

LOS ANGELES – R.A. Dickey made yet another strong bid to start for the National League in the All-Star game. He wants very much to get the nod – not just for himself, but for a unique group he refers to as the ‘’Jedi Council of Knuckleballers.’’

Dickey, who resurrected his career several years ago with the specialty pitch, allowed three hits over eight innings to become the majors’ first 12-game winner and lead the New York Mets to a 9-0 victory over the Dodgers on Friday night.

Daniel Murphy homered and drove in five runs, helping send Los Angeles to its season-worst sixth straight loss.

‘’I think every little boy imagines playing in an All-Star game. So in that regard, it would be a real honor, obviously,’’ Dickey said. ‘’But more than that, I think it would give a real legitimacy to what I do as a knuckleball pitcher. I think there are camps of people out there who don’t view it as a very legitimate thing.

‘’I’m certainly thankful for the people who have come before me and done what I’ve done, because it’s allowed me to have the foundation to build off of to become who I am presently,’’ Dickey added. ‘’I mean, I tried to be Charlie Hough. I tried to be Phil Niekro and Tim Wakefield, and it didn’t work. So when I started bringing in who I was uniquely with that pitch, things started to kind of turn the corner for me.’’

The Dodgers’ only hit over the first 6 1-3 innings was by opposing pitcher Aaron Harang, a two-out single in the second that fell between left fielder Kirk Niewenhuis and center fielder Andres Torres after some miscommunication. A.J. Ellis singled in the seventh and Tony Gwynn Jr. doubled in the eighth.

‘’He was throwing it harder than I’m used to seeing him throw it,’’ Gwynn said. ‘’He threw a lot of strikes with it. And when it’s in the zone and the ball’s moving like that, it’s tough to make contact. It cuts, sinks, it does something different every time he throws it.’’

Dickey offered a much more colorful description of his primary weapon.

‘’The metaphor I would give is that if a traditional knuckleball is a butterfly, mine is more like a butterfly on steroids,’’ he said. ‘’It’s more like a mosquito or a hummingbird than a butterfly, because of the velocity. It comes in and breaks late at the plate. It darts more and it’s in and out of the strike zone. Phil Niekro once told me I had an ‘angry’ knuckleball.’’

Dickey (12-1) had consecutive onehitters against Tampa Bay and Baltimore during interleague play.