Before last night’s game, R.A. Dickey was on a clubhouse computer looking up statistics about the Tigers. After the number he did on Detroit last night, people may be looking up his stats today.

– Roger Rubin, N.Y. Daily News.

I don’t have a link to Rubin’s recap as it has since been replaced by a later version. I transcribed it from the print edition.

So R.A. Dickey looks up stats on a computer before Mets games. Cool. Me too.

I imagine that’s not terribly unusual for a Major League pitcher preparing to face a team he’s never seen before, but then R.A. Dickey has demonstrated a capacity to surprise Mets fans again and again. Maybe he was looking up his own impressive WAR total. Maybe R.A. Dickey is a nerd like the rest of us.

Basically everything we know about R.A. Dickey is awesome. To boot:

He reads: Kevin Burkhardt told Mets fans of Dickey’s pre-game ritual of laying around and reading, and Dickey later told Marty Noble that he stresses the power of the written word with his children and urges them to think critically about literature. Check it out:

“There’s no testing, but I do want to know about their comprehension and what they retain … want them to see beneath the surface, to understand the human condition.”

R.A. Dickey wants his children to understand the human condition. The man sets lofty goals.

He goes by “R.A.”: Not because he’s preventing underage Ruben Tejada from bringing beer back to his dorm room, but because his name is “Robert Alan.” But this is no Bob or Robby Dickey. He’s the R.A., a name that conjures a form of mild authority. Also, it is a rare type that can pull off going by his initials when the initials do not include the letter J. Think about it: You know some J.J.s and T.J.s and J.P.s and maybe a P.J. or two. But R.A.? Unique.

He has a sweet beard: He does.

He looks a tiny bit like Will Ferrell: Also awesome.

He has no ulnar collateral ligament: And yet he can still throw a fastball in the mid-80s and a knuckleball that touches 80. R.A. Dickey is an actual freak of nature. Plus, you can’t tear something that doesn’t exist.

He dominates: In his first seven starts with the Mets, Dickey is 6-0 with a 2.33 ERA. His 2.50 K:BB ratio is impressive for a knuckleballer, and he has induced a 53.2% groundball rate. Smart money says Dickey probably won’t always be this good, but it’s difficult to guess just where his true talent level lies. Dickey has demonstrated reasonably steady improvement since taking up the knuckleball full time a half-decade ago, so there’s reason to expect he’ll continue to outpitch his historical norms.

He makes a hilarious face when he pitches: In conversation, a few of my friends have mentioned “that picture everyone keeps using of R.A. Dickey.” You know the one I’m talking about, right? Where’s he’s got his arm extended and his mouth wide open so it looks like he’s roaring like a lion?

Yeah, that’s not any one particular picture of R.A. Dickey. Look closer at “that picture” the next couple of times you see it. Notice that his uniform keeps changing, even though the rest of him keeps staying the same? The A.P. photo wire has like 30 pictures of R.A. Dickey making that face for at least three different teams. He’s yelling “R.A.” phonetically, like “RAAHHHH!”

Also, R.A. Dickey’s initials spell “Rad.”

So in conclusion, knuckleballers are awesome, and R.A. Dickey is a particularly awesome knuckleballer. Please direct all questions to your resident advisor.