Knuckler

by Tim Wakefield

  Sure enough, even had the Sox beaten the Yankees, there was no guarantee Boston would have won the World Series. When the Yankees themselves lost the championship to the Florida Marlins in six games, many theorized that the Yankees were physically and emotionally drained after their seven-game epic with the Red Sox.

  In the eyes of Tim Wakefield and many others, Grady Little was indeed made a scapegoat.

  It could just as easily have been me.

  Beyond the changes they made, the Red Sox explored countless others that would have shaken the team to the core. Every time word leaked that the Sox were even considering these major changes, the news had the same effect. Frustrated with both the contract and attitude of Manny Ramirez, who was just three years into a whopping eight-year, $160 million contract, the Red Sox placed the slugger on waivers with the small hope that another team might claim him and assume the financial obligation of his remaining contract. Naturally, there were no takers. Still, news of the club's dissatisfaction with Ramirez sparked some trade discussion with other teams, most notably the Texas Rangers, who similarly had a disgruntled superstar in shortstop Alex Rodriguez. The deal made great sense for both teams but came with a very large string attached—the fate of Red Sox shortstop and face-of-the-franchise Nomar Garciaparra.

  By that point, the new Sox officials had also grown frustrated with Garciaparra, who had flatly rejected the team's latest attempt at a contract extension and was entering the final year of his deal. Because the new officials had no real ties to Garciaparra—he had been drafted and developed under former general manager Dan Duquette—they had no reservations about trading him. During Major League Baseball's annual winter meetings in December, Epstein agreed to the frame work of a deal that would send Garciaparra to the Chicago White Sox for talented outfielder Magglio Ordonez, but the proposed trade came with the condition that the Red Sox first complete a deal with the Rangers that would swap Ramirez for Rodriguez.

  The idea was simple: trade an outfielder for a shortstop, then trade your shortstop for an outfielder.

  While Garciaparra publicly bristled at the idea that the club would trade him—he called both a Boston-area newspaper and an all-sports radio station from his honeymoon in Hawaii with soccer star Mia Hamm to express his shock—the deal between the Red Sox and the Rangers crumbled. Seeking the help of the Major League Baseball Players Association to restructure Rodriguez's deal (10 years, $252 million) and make the contract more feasible, the Red Sox failed miserably. In a very public affair, the players' union shot down Boston's proposed reconstruction of Rodriguez's contract, igniting a spat between Lucchino, agent Scott Boras (who represented Rodriguez), the MLBPA, the Rangers, and the Red Sox.

  Nonetheless, there was no disputing that the Red Sox had made major upgrades to a team that came within five outs of going to the World Series—and that Boston was very much a threat to unseat the Yankees in 2004.

  Following all of that winter activity, Wakefield had lots of questions about its impact, especially about the effect of newcomers Schilling and Foulke on a team bond that was as strong as Wakefield had ever experienced during his career. He was not alone. Prior to the Boston Baseball Writers dinner in January, Wakefield and first baseman Kevin Millar privately took their questions about the two pitchers to Francona, who had shared a clubhouse with both Schilling and Foulke at various points during his career as a manager and coach. Francona had most recently served as the bench coach in Oakland—he was in the opposing dugout when the Red Sox came back to defeat Foulke and the A's in the 2003 American League Division Series—and he also had dealt with Schilling during a four-year stint as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies from 1997 to 2000.

  Schilling, in particular, with his reputation as a strong and opinion ated personality who could grate on teammates, concerned the Red Sox players, who worried about the clubhouse dynamic.

  "You're going to want to tell him to shut up every once in a while," Francona told Wakefield and Millar as Sox representatives, dressed in tuxedos, waited in line to be introduced to fans at the dinner. "But he's a good guy."

  Satisfied by his new manager's assessment, Wakefield nodded at the time, though his mind was obviously elsewhere.

  In failing to make the deal for Alex Rodriguez, the Red Sox never imagined that they had opened the door for their rival New York Yankees to close the deal. Just before the start of spring training, in a stunning development, the Yankees announced that they had acquired the great A-Rod, pulling off the blockbuster deal the Red Sox had been unable to execute. Almost nobody saw it coming. The Yankees already had a Hall of Fame–caliber shortstop in Derek Jeter, so nobody regarded New York as a potential destination for Rodriguez. In fact, the Yankees had an unexpected vacancy at third base because Aaron Boone, of all people, had suffered a major knee injury while playing basketball during the off-season. No one imagined A-Rod at third. But there he was, and the 2004 season had already elevated to an arms race before the pitchers even reported to camp.

  Among Red Sox fans, the response was predictable. Woe is us. The Yankees had just replaced the hero of the 2003 ALCS with the best player in baseball, even if the Yankees were required to sacrifice talented second baseman Alfonso Soriano in the process. Some Red Sox fans who had gone generations without celebrating a world title feared that history was merely repeating itself, that Rodriguez ending up in New York was akin to Boston's decision to sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920, a decision that forever altered the histories of the two franchises and spawned the Curse of the Bambino.

  But inside the walls of a Red Sox clubhouse fortified with off-season acquisitions and now stuffed with both talent and moxie, Rodriguez's arrival in New York was seen as something altogether different.

  "Nobody said it would be easy, and George [Steinbrenner, the Yankees' owner] is going to do whatever it takes to stop us," said Embree shortly after arriving at camp in Fort Myers, Florida. "I think it's kind of exciting ... [because] they're worried about us. They know we have a very good ball club."

  Said backup catcher Mirabelli: "I think there's definitely respect for the Red Sox there, but I don't know if they'd admit that. They know they've got a fight on their hands every time they play us, regardless of who they've got on their team.... Look, A-Rod would help any team, but still, on paper, the Red Sox are right where they need to be."

  Tim Wakefield felt this as strongly as anyone.

  While first-year manager Francona had some egos to massage—Garciaparra in particular was still vexed by the Red Sox pursuit of Rodriguez in the first place—there was no disputing the talent on the Boston roster. The Red Sox were stacked. They had some major contract issues: Garciaparra and catcher Jason Varitek as well as starting pitchers Lowe and Martinez would all be eligible for free agency at the end of the year. But there was a potential benefit in that—the Red Sox were likely to get the best possible performance from these players in their final contract years. There was a great deal at stake, and Red Sox officials were wise enough to recognize that the players' concern about protecting their own individual futures as well as their collective legacy could provide key motivation.

  For many of the Red Sox who preceded the new owners and team administrators, the 2004 season had the feeling of the last roundup.

  "They've made it pretty apparent this is probably the last time the four of us [Varitek, Lowe, Martinez, and Garciaparra] will be together," the typically soft-spoken Varitek said late in spring training. "We've got to hold on to that and win."

  Amid all of that, Tim Wakefield found himself in a most unusual place.

  For one of the first times in his Red Sox career, during a potentially unsettling time, he had stability that others did not.

  The Red Sox burst from the starting gate with a vengeance. The team won 15 of its first 21 games, making it clear from the outset that they were a team on a mission. During the first three weeks of the season, the Red Sox played seven games against the Yankees—four in Boston, three in New York—and w
on six of them. The first meetings came on April 16–19 at Fenway Park, where the revamped, reinforced teams played for the first meaningful time since Boone's homer the previous October.

  As fate would have it, Wakefield pitched the first game, which doubled as his first start of the season. He went seven sterling innings and backboned a resounding 6–2 Boston win. For the knuckleballer, the game brought full closure to his 2003 season and, like the writers' dinner, was impossible to forget. Wakefield was cheered as he walked from the dugout to the bullpen for his warm-up tosses, cheered when he was announced to the home crowd, and cheered when he walked off the mound at the end of the seventh. He felt as if the crowd was speaking directly to him at times, celebrating his career and contributions to the team and vowing to do exactly what Red Sox fans had learned to do each spring.

  Let's give it another try together, Tim.

  For that matter, Wakefield had long since learned the same lesson.

  "To me, I could see it in his face—there was a relief. I think he was waiting for this outing for some time," Mirabelli said of Wakefield. "We were all in shock [last year].... The season was over, and we felt like we had a lot of game left in us. He was the MVP in that series. There was no doubt in my mind about that, and for it to turn that quickly on him ... it was a shame it ended like that. But without him, we wouldn't have been in that situation."

  With the page now officially turned on 2003—for the Red Sox and Wakefield both—the team settled into the rhythm of the regular season at a relatively uninspiring pace. After starting the season 15–6, the Red Sox went a positively mediocre 41–39 over the next 80 games, a chunk of the schedule that constituted almost exactly half the season and brought Boston to the brink of the annual July 31 trading deadline. During that stretch, some of the team's internal issues began to eat away at it from the inside. Garciaparra remained unhappy and was playing poor defense in the wake of a heel injury he had suffered during spring training. Matters came to a head during a 5–4 loss to New York in 13 innings on July 1 at Yankee Stadium. Even though Garciaparra did not play in that game because he had been scheduled to have the day off as part of his rehabilitation from the injury, his teammates seemed irked that he did not fight his way into the lineup. The defeat concluded a three-game series sweep by the Yankees that increased New York's lead in the division from 5½ games to a whopping 8½, and many believed that Garciaparra had abandoned his teammates, acting selfishly in the midst of his ongoing issues with club management.

  Whatever the case, Epstein had had enough, and by the time July 31 rolled around, he pulled the trigger on a blockbuster deal that sent Garciaparra to the Chicago Cubs in a three-team trade that landed shortstop Orlando Cabrera and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz in Boston. In a separate deal, the Sox acquired speedy outfielder Dave Roberts from the Los Angeles Dodgers. All of Epstein's moves were designed to improve Boston's defense and athleticism—Cabrera and Mientkiewicz were excellent defense players—while simultaneously ridding the club of a holdover from the previous regime who seemed to be growing increasingly disgruntled.

  "I like the club as is. The safe thing to do would have been to play it out. The safe thing to do would have been not to touch it," Epstein said. "But in my mind, we were not going to win the World Series as is."

  Wakefield, for his part, had seen this sort of thing before, albeit under different circumstances, with different people. Roger Clemens had departed via free agency after the 1996 season. Mo Vaughn did the same late in 1998. The Red Sox had undergone considerable turnover during Wakefield's time in Boston—players, managers, general managers, owners—and his experience in Pittsburgh had long since hardened him to the realities of the game. People came and people went, and there really wasn't a damned thing that anyone could ever do about it.

  Wakefield, in fact, had learned of the Garciaparra deal in unusual fashion. Despite trade rumors that involved the Red Sox shortstop, Wakefield never believed that Garciaparra would be traded, right up until the moments before the annual trading deadline. Garciaparra simply had meant too much to the franchise.

  That day, Wakefield had left the team hotel in downtown Minneapolis and taken a taxi to the Metrodome, where he was dropped off in the rear of the building, as usual. He entered the stadium near the loading dock, where he greeted and walked past building security, then walked through the cavernous main hallway that circled the Metrodome and served as the central access point to all the locker rooms in the building—college and pro football, baseball. Finally, he arrived at the door that led to the visitors' clubhouse.

  Just as Wakefield was headed in, Garciaparra was headed out.

  Where are you going, Nomar?

  The answer: To Chicago.

  Indeed, Garciaparra was headed to the Cubs. Wakefield had no idea what to say to his teammate. Are you kidding? What happened? The news caught him completely off guard. Garciaparra did not know who the Red Sox were receiving in return. He just knew he was out. Wakefield wished Garciaparra luck and told his former teammate he had enjoyed playing with him. Garciaparra did the same. Then the two shared a quick embrace before Wakefield walked into the Red Sox clubhouse and Garciaparra began the long walk out.

  Once in the Boston clubhouse, Wakefield learned that the Red Sox had acquired Cabrera from the Montreal Expos and Mientkiewicz from the Twins, and that Mientkiewicz had been put in a most amusing position. A night earlier, Mientkiewicz had worn the uniform of the Twins and sat in the dugout opposite the Red Sox. Now that the deal had been made, all he had to do was change locker rooms. Mientkiewicz woke up in the same city and went to the same ballpark on consecutive days, but he played for different teams.

  The visiting clubhouse at the Metrodome felt like a bus station. Wakefield told reporters that he was "sad" to see Garciaparra leave, but that he also recognized "the business side of this sport." He was still processing the moves himself. The Red Sox had a great deal invested in the 2004 season, and now they were changing course, again.

  I wonder how this is going to play out.

  More dips and turns.

  For all the large-scale changes going on, their starting rotation had remained remarkably intact, and the Red Sox would play the entire year without a starting pitcher missing so much as one turn on the mound. They treaded water for the next two weeks. When the Sox suffered a 5–4 loss to the Chicago White Sox on Sunday, August 15, they were a season-high 10½ games behind the first-place Yankees with a mere 46 games to play. They had gone a mediocre 8–7 since the changes that cast off Garciaparra and brought Cabrera, Mientkiewicz, and Roberts to Boston. Time was dwindling, and the Red Sox needed to get their act together quickly. While Epstein had expected an acclimation period after the changes, the Red Sox soon might risk missing the playoffs entirely.

  If that happened, Wakefield knew that Boston's failure in the 2003 American League Championship Series would take on even greater significance and that the team could face even more dramatic changes.

  As if flipping a switch, the Red Sox then morphed into their season-opening form, ripping off a succession of victories that seemed downright effortless. From August 16 through September 8, the Red Sox won six straight, lost one, won 10 straight, lost one, won four straight. Wakefield could not remember a time when the Red Sox ever played better as a team. When the surge was complete, Boston had gone 20–2 over a scintillating 20-game stretch that had brought the club within 2½ games of the first-place Yankees and all but secured a playoff berth as the American League wild-card entry.

  During the streak, almost every Boston player contributed in some way, shape, or form—and most of them were playing at a very high level. In his final three starts of August, Wakefield went 3–0 with a 2.57 ERA and limited opponents to a .231 batting average. To that point, the season had been far more of a struggle for him than 2003—Wakefield would finish the 2004 regular season at 12–10 with a 4.87 ERA and pitch 188½ innings in 32 outings (30 starts)—but he made his usual contributions and sacrifices during a cam
paign in which the Red Sox finished 98–64, posting their highest win total since 1978 and finishing with the third-best record in baseball.

  Though the Red Sox failed to catch the Yankees for the division title, that was a failure of relatively little consequence. Boston and New York were both going back to the playoffs, and the teams seemed to be on a collision course given all the events of the previous 12 months.

  Said a succinct Francona, capturing the essence of the moment: "This is the beginning."

  Or more appropriately, another new beginning.

  As had happened with great regularity over a two-year span, the Red Sox once again found themselves starting anew. They had changed owners. They had changed general managers. They had changed managers. They had made the playoffs and lost to the Yankees, revamped their roster, and started anew. They had traded Garciaparra and started over yet again. Then they had made the playoffs and recalibrated once more.

  Quite accustomed to new beginnings, Wakefield was earmarked to start Game 4 of the playoffs. The addition of Schilling had reordered the starting rotation, with Martinez slipping into an uncharacteristic number-two spot. The stringy Bronson Arroyo was third. Squeezed out of the rotation, for a handful of reasons, was Lowe. First, because the postseason typically included an abundance of travel days on which no games would be played, teams generally operated with a maximum of four starters, not five. And second, among a deep group that included Schilling, Martinez, Arroyo, and Wakefield, Lowe had been the least effective down the stretch, and that performance had now left him on the outside looking in.