The best behind-the-scenes MLB moments we ever saw

Tim Kurkjian: Niekro won't knuckle under

The Blue Jays clinched a playoff spot the second-to-last day of the 1985 season. So on the last day, "they were all hung over,'' said Yankees knuckleball pitcher Phil Niekro, who was scheduled to pitch the season finale and was going for his 300th victory. The night before, he and his brother, Joe, also a Yankees pitcher, decided Joe would pitch in relief of Phil so he could potentially have a part in Phil's historic 300th win.

"So with two outs in the ninth inning, Joe, not the pitching coach, came to the mound to tell me if I got one out more, I would be the oldest pitcher ever [age 46] to throw a shutout,'' Phil said. "So I told him, 'Forget our plan, get the hell off the mound!' The Blue Jays had runners at second and third. Jeff Burroughs, who was a teammate of mine in Atlanta, was at the plate. We were deciding whether to walk him to load the bases. Burroughs looked at me, pointed to himself and said, 'Pitch to me.' He swung at a knuckleball that was three feet outside for the final out. It was the only knuckleball I threw the whole game.''

Tim Keown: Hendrick has last word

I was a rookie beat writer in 1991, sitting in the clubhouse of the old Scottsdale Stadium during a rain delay while a group of current and former Giants held court in the middle of the room -- Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Will Clark, Don Robinson, Willie McGee. There was some serious experience around the table, and an impromptu storytelling session broke out. They started in on the wildest things they'd seen teammates do on the field, and at one point McGee stood up and launched into the best baseball story I've ever heard.

With two outs in the ninth inning of a game between the Reds and Cardinals, George Hendrick broke up a no-hitter by Mario Soto with a home run on a 2-2 count. That's the basic version, the version you can find by looking up the box score from May 13, 1984.

The version McGee told? So much better. McGee stood in the center of the room and pantomimed Hendrick standing with the bat on his shoulder, watching strike one and then strike two with no apparent interest. He watched the 0-2 pitch, a ball outside, with the same indifference. But on the 1-2 pitch, Soto threw a fastball under Hendrick's chin. Hendrick hit the dirt -- bat and helmet flying -- and then stood back up, grabbed his bat, palmed his helmet back on his head and got back in the box. It bears noting Hendrick was a mysterious dude of immense talent and no interest in the game's frills.

(In another of McGee's stories, Hendrick arranged to have a car waiting for him in the tunnel behind right field at Busch Stadium after the Cardinals won the 1982 World Series, and when the last out was recorded, he jogged through the open gate and got in the car in full uniform, heading for the offseason.)

Anyway, Hendrick got back in the box, looked out at Soto without saying a word and proceeded to hit the next pitch, a changeup, over the left-field fence to tie the score and ruin Soto's no-hitter at the last possible moment. Hendrick jogged around the bases dispassionately, put his helmet back in the rack, sat down on the bench and said to no one in particular, "I was going to let the man have his no-hitter."

Alden Gonzalez: Trout, Pujols have initial 'meeting'

I was there when Mike Trout and Albert Pujols first met, and it was awkward. It was the spring of 2012. Pujols was a fully formed superstar who had joined the Los Angeles Angels on a 10-year, $240 million contract. Trout was a 20-year-old prospect -- a highly rated one, but a prospect nonetheless. He hung around the corner of the clubhouse with all the other young players who didn't have a spot on the team.

One morning, Pujols was speaking with a teammate and Trout thought he caught his eye. "'Sup, Pujols," Trout blurted, nodding in his direction. Pujols didn't acknowledge him. Trout stayed quiet, sunk back in his chair and turned to someone on his left. "You think he heard me?"

Not long thereafter, Trout began what has become a historical run of greatness. He became the dominant player of the 2010s, immediately after Pujols was the dominant player of the 2000s. His ascension relegated Pujols to the background, but Trout remained gracious. He celebrated every Pujols accomplishment and constantly spoke about him with reverence. In turn, Pujols guided Trout on how to handle stardom and how to maintain consistency when the expectations seemed impossibly high. He was among the few who could relate.

Sam Miller: A very sticky situation

There's a ton of downtime between arriving at the ballpark and game time, and a lot of it gets spent sitting in the dugout, studying all of its banal details. Once, I was waiting for C.J. Wilson to meet me in the dugout for a pregame interview. I was staring at the rosin bag, and it occurred to me that I'd never held a rosin bag. I wondered what it felt like; dumbly, I was imagining it would be powdery and smooth, like a rock climber's bag of chalk.

But rosin -- you probably already know this, but I hadn't made the connection! -- is just the solid form of resin, a sticky and viscous tree secretion. It's basically sap! I picked up the rosin bag and got a sap-sticky palm. Baseball is a handshake-obsessed work environment, and I realized immediately that I was going to have to shake a player's hand any second.

So, in a panic, I went to the dugout water cooler to rinse my hands off. It splashed all over my pants and shirt, but at least I had something to scrub with. Except it wasn't water. It was Gatorade. That's when Wilson showed up.

Kiley McDaniel: Trea Turner's first impression

When covering the National High School Invitational tournament every March in Cary, North Carolina, I typically try to line up games from the nearby Division I colleges to catch as well, but in 2013, there weren't a lot of options to see first-round types that weekend. I went to see NC State because they had two sophomores, left-handed pitcher Carlos Rodon and shortstop Trea Turner, who were likely high first-round picks the next year. I hadn't seen them before but had heard great things.

They were both excellent, even better than I expected. After comparing notes with a couple of scouts in attendance, we agreed Turner was a slightly superior prospect, and both were legitimate candidates to go No. 1 overall in the 2014 draft. Rodon ended up going third, and Turner slipped all the way to 13th after playing through injury for the summer and struggling at the plate in the first part of the spring.

I got a chance to speak with both of them after the game, and Rodon seemed very aware of his trajectory, unfazed by my interest as a writer, even though it was still going to be months until 30 MLB teams were knocking down his door.

Turner was very different. He was more candid and open and was legitimately surprised when I told him that I thought he was a little better than his heralded teammate. He told me he called the coaches at his dream school, Florida State, when he was in high school, to get them to come recruit him and they basically blew him off. He made a jump in talent as a senior in high school and NC State had an extra scholarship, so they were his best offer for college. He talked about how good it felt to perform well against the Seminoles as a freshman starter and how motivating it was to hear that I thought he could go that high in the draft.

Fast forward to the Futures Game a few years later, when Turner was now a top prospect on the verge of the major leagues. A man walked up to me and asked if my name was Kiley, then shook my hand. He was Trea's dad, Mark, and he wanted to thank me for believing in his son before anyone else in pro baseball did. I assured him I had nothing to do with his son's success, but he was thankful regardless.

I ran into Mark again years later in the Turner Field concourse when I worked for the Braves and Trea was really hammering us, while playing for the Nationals. I ran into Mark once again and met his wife, Donna, when I was scouting a prospect at Trea's old high school (they still lived nearby and went to the games) and he recognized me standing behind the plate with a radar gun. They came down to say hello in front of the other scouts, who were all confused, because they knew I didn't draft Trea. I still maintain I didn't do anything different than any other scout or writer in my position would've done, but it always feels nice to be in on the ground floor of something and be recognized when you're right, in a field that has so much inherent failure.