2026 INDUCTEE – GARY KNOTTS

By Bruce McLellan
The Decatur Daily

Brewer hoops and baseball star

Like a lot of sons, Gary Knotts played catch with his dad. But as the son started to develop as a pitcher, he didn’t simply toss the baseball to his dad. He threw it harder and harder.

Eventually, the elder Knotts had to prepare for what had become training sessions at their Priceville home.

“He bought shin guards, he had a chest protector. I think he bought the whole nine yards,” Knotts recalled of his late father. 

Eventually, the son would start throwing the baseball at more than 90 mph.

“He was never shy to let people know that I wore his shins out,” Knotts said. “It got to that point where he’s like, ‘I’m not going to catch you anymore.’

“I’ve got some guys I train that throw that hard, and I don’t like catching them either, so I understand.”

The ability to throw a baseball fast eventually led Knotts to success as a high school pitcher and a major league career.

Close to 6-foot-4 in height, Knotts, now 49, was a standout basketball player at Brewer, earning the MVP award in the 1995 Morgan County Tournament. 

Knotts’ athletic journey began when he was in the first grade. Although his father, Gary Knotts Sr., who died in 2013, did not play high school sports, he got his son started at a young age in youth sports.

“He saw that early in me, my athletic ability,” the younger Knotts said. “Even though he wasn’t necessarily athletic himself, he still enjoyed sports.”

Knotts tried multiple sports, including soccer and football.

“I never really got into football, but baseball seemed to be a good fit for me,” he said. “I was pretty good at hitting the baseball and throwing it around. So it just kind of stuck.”

Ironically, he may have been more passionate about basketball. He spent hours in the family’s driveway shooting basketball and never made baseball his only sport.

“Man, I loved shooting hoops, and baseball was one of those things I did when basketball was over,” he said. “Basketball, it’s more cohesiveness, it’s more camaraderie. Your success is dependent on other guys playing defense and doing their jobs. You’re out there sweating with each other and bumping bodies and bumping heads and getting hurt. I just enjoyed the physicality of it.”

Knotts even turned down an invitation to play American Legion baseball between his junior and senior years at Brewer. The team’s organizers wanted him to attend games when he wasn’t pitching. That would’ve been OK with Knotts if he could’ve played shortstop and got to hit on his pitching off-days like he did at Brewer.

But the American Legion team already had a shortstop, and Knotts didn’t want to be a spectator at dozens of baseball games when he wasn’t pitching.

“I ended up playing basketball all summer,” he said. “We had open gym. I’d much rather spend my time shooting basketball and playing pickup games. That’s just the way it was.”

That decision benefited the Brewer basketball team and led to what might have been Knotts’ most significant sports accomplishment at the school.

Earl Morris, Brewer’s basketball coach at the time, remembers his 1994-95 team taking advantage of the offseason to play pickup games in the school gym and improve. The team’s hard work continued in the fall under Morris and assistant coach Sam Brown.

“They worked us hard. I just remember coming home and being so exhausted and then having to do my homework,” Knotts said.

By the time the Morgan County Tournament arrived in January 1995, Brewer’s boys had a 14-9 record and the No. 1 seed for the event. In its 22^th year to have a basketball program, Brewer was still looking for its first ever Morgan County Tournament championship.

In the semifinals, Brewer faced a Hartselle team that included several holdover players from a state championship team the previous year. Hartselle also had eliminated Brewer from the county tournament in each of the previous two seasons.

This time it was Brewer coming out on top with a 70-61 win in overtime over the Tigers. Shawn Langford  led the Patriots with 19 points. Knotts scored 16.

The win set up a championship game showdown with Danville, ranked No. 5 in Class 3A.

 “They were supposed to beat us,” Morris said.

Brewer had a different plan. Knotts scored 27 points in the 77-66 victory.

“That whole tournament it seems like we were dominant and could beat anybody,” Knotts said. “It was just one of those games where everything was falling.

“I think I probably averaged half that throughout the season. I just wanted to be on the court. I just enjoyed being out there with my buddies. It was a good time.”

When his senior basketball season ended and the baseball season began, Knotts wasn’t being closely tracked by scouts for professional  teams. A right-handed pitcher, Knotts didn’t even know how fast he could throw.

“All I knew is that I could throw it by guys when I needed it,” Knots said.

Eventually word got around that Brewer had a pitcher who threw fast. Then in one game a scout recorded Knotts pitches with a radar gun.

“He said, ‘You know how hard you’re throwing the ball?’ I was like, no. He was like, you’re 91, 92,” Knotts said. “I said, ‘Is that good?’  That’s how ignorant I was about it.”

Knotts finished his senior season at Brewer with a 1.94 earned run average with 83 strikeouts in 65 innings. He also led the team in batting with a .384 average. 

Bill Singer, a former major-league pitcher mostly for the Los Angeles Dodgers, lived in Decatur at the time and was a scout for the Florida Marlins. He learned about Knotts and continued scouting him.

“Somebody told him there was a kid out there throwing the ball hard. So when he came out and saw me, that’s when everybody started showing up,” Knotts recalled. “It was like somebody finds out and next thing you know you got 10 radar guns in the stands that I had never seen before.”

After Brewer’s season ended, Knotts was selected to play in the Alabama Lions Club All-Star baseball games for graduated high school seniors. Knotts had six strikeouts in three innings in the first round game played in Decatur in May, and interest in him continued to build during the rest of the All-Star series.

In June 1995, the Marlins, encouraged by Singer’s scouting reports, selected Knotts in the 11th round of the major-league draft. However, Knotts put the pros on hold to play a season for Northwest Community in Phil Campbell.  That ended up being a good decision because he met his future wife, Amanda, there.

“I sat behind him in history class, and we say the rest is history,” she said.

They celebrated 27 years of marriage on Jan. 1.

Knotts played one season at Northwest and in May 1996 he signed with the Marlins, who had retained rights to him. He ended up playing professional baseball in the major, minor and independent leagues from then until 2009.

He spent the summer of 1996 in a rookie league and 1997 and ’98 in Class A leagues before progressing to Double-A in 1999-2000. He spent time in Triple-A in 2001, and got his first experience in the majors that same year. He pitched six innings over two games for the Marlins before returning to the minors.

Knotts spent more time in the majors in 2002. In 2004, Knotts had his busiest season in the majors. He made 19 starts and 17 relief appearances over 135 innings, with a 7-6 record for the Detroit Tigers.

The career seemed on an upward swing, but Knotts injured both his rotator cuff and labrum during spring training of 2005. 

“They didn’t give me much of a hope to come back from that,” Knotts said. “The doctor said we’ll do the best we can and we’ll see what happens.”

It turned out that the rotator cuff tear was not as severe as expected. Knotts was 28 when the injury occurred and he missed the 2005 and 2006 seasons, meaning he was 30 by the time the 2007 spring training came round.

“When you hit that 30 mark, it’s kind of like if you’re not established in the big leagues, they don’t give you a good shot,” Knotts said. “You’re going to have to still prove yourself.”

He started 2007 in the Independent Atlantic League before the Philadelphia Phillies signed him. He pitched in both Double-A and Triple-A for the Phillies organization. At the end of the season, the Phillies said they wanted him back in 2008 and asked him what he wanted.

“I said, ‘Well, I want a legitimate shot.’”

He thought he performed well enough in the 2008 spring training to make the major-league roster but was sent down to Triple-A just before the season started. That was a double disappointment because not only was he back in the minors, he missed out on being part of a team he knew would be good. The Phillies won the 2008 World Series.

Knotts spent the 2008 season in Triple-A, pitching first in the Phillies’ farm system and then in Baltimore’s. After pitching in the Atlantic League again in 2009, he ended a professional career that stretched over 14 years.

“It seemed like the time in the big leagues was very fast,” he said. “I hadn’t quite got established when I got hurt and I didn’t really get a shot back at the big leagues after that.”

Knotts had several notable moments during the four seasons he spent in the major leagues. His first major-league victory was especially memorable for a player from North Alabama. It came against the Atlanta Braves when he was pitching for the Marlins.

Knotts entered the April 13, 2002, game in Miami in the top of the 13^thinning with the score 4-all.

“I was about the last guy in the bullpen. They had pitched everybody,” he said. “I had not really established myself as a bullpen guy.

“This was still new for me at the time because I had been a starter my entire career. I had gone to them in spring training and said hey give me a shot at making the team out of the bullpen and that’s what I did.”

He ended up pitching two innings and didn’t allow a run. He struck out Braves catcher Javy Lopez in the top of the 13th inning and got Chipper Jones to hit into a double play to end the top of the 14th. That enabled the Marlins to win 5-4 in the bottom of the 14th on an infield single with the bases loaded and two outs.

Knotts didn’t give up a hit and had one strikeout.

“I remember that because it was against the Atlanta Braves,” Knotts said. “You had Chipper Jones and Andruw Jones – you had all those guys that were in the (Braves) lineup. So that was one of my good memories.”

Another memorable game came in 2003. The Marlins had traded him to the Detroit Tigers before that season. He faced the White Sox on May 24, 2003, in Chicago. He allowed only two hits and two walks while striking out six in 7 ⅔ innings of a 1-0 Detroit victory.

The final batter Knotts faced in the bottom of the eighth was Frank Thomas, a former Auburn player known as the “Big Hurt.” Thomas struck out swinging.

“I just pitched really well,” Knotts said. “They interviewed me after the game and I got the pie in the face. That was one of the things you always remember when you pitch well and your teammates do that to you during the interview. That’s always a good thing. But shaving cream is not good in the face.”

Since 2011, Knotts has owned and operated Integrity Sports Training in Decatur where he trains young softball and baseball players looking for their path to stardom.