Last night, New York Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey became the first knuckleballer to win the Cy Young award and the first Met to win it since 1985.

“Clayton and Gio were both just supernatural in the way that they perform,” Dickey told MLB Network. “I’ve had to hit against them both, and it is ridiculous trying to pick up the ball on those guys. They gave everybody fits. Just being mentioned in the same breath as those guys is an honor.

“But for me, this is an honor to be shared. It’s a great honor, and I am not a self-made man by any stretch of the imagination. There have been countless people who have poured into me in a way that has changed my life — not only on the field, but off.”

Dickey has been featured in Sports Spectrum multiple times and credits God for the turnaround in his life and career.

“I had to unlearn things that I had learned in my previous 20 years of throwing a baseball,” Dickey tells Sports Spectrum. “I had to unlearn in an effort to relearn the proper mechanics of throwing a knuckleball. That was a really trying time; God was helping me to endure and persevere. I had a lot of self-doubt. I made a lot of bad decisions as far as what I put my time into.”