Knuckler

  In the hours leading up to Game 1, Wakefield treated the outing as he would any other game, though his concerns centered on one highly unusual variable: the flashbulbs. Wakefield wasn't quite sure how he would deal with them. The first pitch of every World Series all but went off like a starter's pistol, no matter where the game was played, and flashbulbs inevitably flickered like fireflies the moment the ball left the pitcher's hand. Wakefield wondered if it would break his concentration. He wondered what would happen if leadoff man Edgar Renteria swung and made contact, whether he would be able to see the ball coming off the bat, whether the ball might just look like one of the many bursts of bright light at Fenway Park. That moment, Wakefield knew, was something he simply could not prepare for.

  Beyond that, the knuckleballer had shown up at the ballpark, as always, and changed into his uniform before sitting at his locker and finding ways to pass the time. Because the media was prohibited from access to the team before postseason games, the clubhouse was more controlled, less chaotic. Only players, coaches, and team personnel milled about. Wakefield had seen many players develop superstitions over the course of their careers—Garciaparra had been one of the most obsessive—but he always resisted becoming a slave to them himself, joking with people that he found superstitions to be "bad luck." Baseball was baseball. As much as anyone else who played the game—or more so—a knuckleballer knew there was only so much he could control. And so Tim Wakefield focused on the things he could.

  Wakefield had nerves, to be sure, but he wasn't nervous, per se, at least not about anything other than flashbulbs.

  The first pitch, as it turned out, was far less worrisome than Wakefield expected: his knuckleball fluttered to home plate amid the succession of camera shutters that popped like corn kernels. Renteria did not swing. Strike one. Renteria swung at the second pitch and missed, took the third for a ball, then swung at and missed the fourth pitch, recording the first out of the 2004 World Series by strikeout in what would be a scoreless first for the St. Louis Cardinals.

  By the time Wakefield took the mound for the second, the Sox had a 4–0 lead courtesy of yet another home run from David Ortiz and a run-scoring single by Bill Mueller. Over the next two and two-thirds innings, a span covering 15 batters, Wakefield allowed just two hits, but he also hit one batter and walked five others. The Red Sox were supporting him with tremendous offense—Boston scored three more times in the third and had a 7–2 advantage going into the fourth, Wakefield's final inning—but Wakefield simply could not harness the knuckler. When Wakefield issued his fifth and final walk—this one to Renteria with two outs in the fourth—Francona felt he simply could not wait any longer. The score was now 7–5, and even though Wakefield was at least partially victimized by an uncharacteristically poor defensive game—the Sox had committed four errors—the manager summoned right-hander Bronson Arroyo from the bullpen.

  "You know, going into the game, we thought it had a chance to be tough because the wind was blowing straight in, which doesn't help his effectiveness," Francona said. "But he came out and threw the ball very well. And then the start of the [fourth] inning with the walks, I mean, when you score, the last thing you want to do is walk somebody, and you walk three. Once he did that, he started getting outs, but we started to throw the ball around and put ourselves in a tough spot. But, you know, when you have a four-run lead or five-run lead, it's hard to walk people and get away with it."

  Still, the Red Sox ultimately did. Though the Cardinals tied the game twice—at 7–7 and 9–9—both times the Red Sox immediately took back the lead. The second time came in the bottom of the eighth inning, when Boston second baseman Mark Bellhorn hooked a drive to right field that struck the foul pole for a two-run home run. The home run was the final blow in an eventual 11–9 Red Sox victory that extended the club's impressive postseason winning streak, leaving Wakefield with the only thing that really mattered whenever a pitcher took the mound: a win for his team.

  As it turned out, Wakefield did not pitch again in the World Series because the Red Sox simply did not need him to.

  With the wind now indisputably at their backs—the Game 1 victory was Boston's fifth straight after trailing the Yankees by a 3–0 series count in the ALCS—the Red Sox did not let up. Boston won the next three games of the World Series by scores of 6–2, 4–1, and 3–0, completely dominating a series in which they outscored St. Louis by a final count of 24–12. During the entire four-game set, the Red Sox never trailed. Even in Game 1, St. Louis was always chasing. Three outs from postseason elimination late in Game 4 of the ALCS, the Red Sox had improbably rallied for eight straight wins, outscoring the Yankees and Cardinals by a combined 38–15 over the final six games of the playoffs. Since Jason Varitek's game-tying sacrifice fly against Mariano Rivera in the eighth inning of ALCS Game 5, the Red Sox had been no worse than tied for their final 60 innings of the 2004 baseball season.

  In the bowels of an aging Busch Stadium following the Red Sox victory behind Derek Lowe—yes, him again—in Game 4, reporters once again were lined up outside the visiting clubhouse, just as they had been in New York. The lockers were once again draped in plastic. Officials from Major League Baseball rushed commissioner Allan "Bud" Selig past reporters and into the room for the official presentation of the Commissioner's Trophy, a ceremony that took place every October in the clubhouse of the victorious team. Baseball lifer Selig understood the magnitude of what the Red Sox had accomplished in the context of baseball history, and he offered reporters a succinct assessment of the seeming chain reaction that had delivered Boston to the world title.

  "Wow," Selig said without breaking stride.

  Inside the walls of the Red Sox clubhouse, the scene was very much like the one that had taken place in New York, though Francona had no reason to remind anyone that there was still baseball to be played. Redemption for the Red Sox was now complete. The season was over. Boston effectively had run the table and finished the 2004 campaign by going a sensational 45–15 in its last 60 games, 46 during the regular season (during which the Red Sox went 34–12) and the final 14 in the playoffs (during which the Red Sox went 11–3). The most senior members of the Red Sox had an intimate understanding of what this outcome truly meant, their sentiments bouncing from one to another amid a clubhouse filled with otherwise deafening revelry.

  "We're finally winners," said Lowe. "We're not the happy guys that came in second, the so-close-but-so-far kind of thing. There are so many people who deserve credit for this. I was happy to see Johnny Pesky here, and I saw a tear in his eye. I hope the Red Sox bring everybody back (from the past to celebrate). This isn't just the 2004 Red Sox. This is 86 years here."

  Said Wakefield from the opposite side of the celebration: "We'll never hear the '1918' chants again. It's huge for the franchise. Ever since Mr. [John] Henry and Mr. [Tom] Werner and Larry [Lucchino] took over, they've pointed us in the right direction. People that have lived there longer than I have had too many sad days. Now they can rejoice in the city of Boston."

  Tim Wakefield was all too happy to join them.

  Eleven

  There are two theories on hitting a knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of them works.

  —Renowned hitting coach Charlie Lau

  THE CHAMPIONSHIP PARADE was everything Tim Wakefield had imagined in every respect but one: it was too darned short.

  Projecting crowds of Red Sox fans in the hundreds of thousands, Boston city officials responded to the team's first World Series win in 86 years by organizing a rolling rally, eschewing the standard celebration at City Hall Plaza for a road trip on duck boats through the city's streets and neighborhoods, even venturing into the Charles River. Despite cold temperatures and light, persistent drizzle, an estimated 1.6 million fans turned out. Wakefield rode on a float with fellow veteran starters Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, and Derek Lowe—one of the teams within the team—and stood alongside his wife, Stacy, while toting their six-month-old son, Trevor. Fans seeking autographs tosse
d items into the boats with the hope that each would be signed and tossed back, and three-fourths of the starting rotation found it particularly amusing when one fan tossed a baseball that plunked an unaware Pedro Martinez on the head, the oft-accused head-hunter getting a playful dose of his own medicine.

  Then it was all over, and the Red Sox quickly dispersed after an event that Wakefield somehow had expected to endure.

  Is this it?

  Wakefield's ears were ringing, as if he had just left a rock concert, and reentry would require some time, for him and for all of the Red Sox. The subsequent days and weeks featured a succession of opportunities to sign memorabilia in one hotel conference room after the next, and Wakefield agreed to some, passed on others. Similar ripples of the championship extended into winter and beyond, and when the Red Sox finally arrived in Fort Myers, Florida, the following spring, in some ways it felt as though the 2004 season had not yet ended.

  And yet, as Wakefield knew, the Red Sox had another season to play when February arrived far more rapidly than anyone had anticipated, a reminder that all good things, like bad things, come to an end. We have to start playing again sometime. While Red Sox manager Terry Francona knew that questions would abound throughout camp about the team's extraordinary comeback in the 2004 playoffs, he, too, knew that he and his team needed to prepare for another season.

  For Wakefield, the winter had served as yet another reminder that baseball is a business. The Red Sox continued to make difficult personnel decisions over the winter; the front office allowed pitchers Martinez and Lowe to depart via free agency while re-signing catcher Varitek and formally entrusting him with the title and responsibilities of team captain. Wakefield, for his part, was entering the final year of a four-year, $13 million contract that would pay him slightly more than $4.6 million in 2005, but the events of the off-season only cemented the thoughts he'd had throughout his Red Sox career. I want to finish my career here. I want to have what Varitek has. I want my career to be worth something more than just a pile of pay stubs. Winning a World Series in Boston was the consummate achievement, Wakefield believed, and now he wanted to focus on solidifying his legacy as a Red Sox lifer during an age when the game had been defined by mercenaries who toted big contracts—and who were in pursuit of bigger ones.

  The way I can be different is to be loyal, he thought.

  The feeling was mutual.

  For the Red Sox, the Fenway Park opener on Monday, April 11, would be a day unlike any other in the history of Fenway Park. With the Yankees again scheduled as the opponent, the Red Sox would raise their World Series championship banner and hand out their championship rings, a moment that the Red Sox and the entire New England region had been awaiting since the days of World War I.

  The Red Sox, to their credit, planned the event perfectly, down to every last detail.

  That day, Tim Wakefield would be their starting pitcher.

  Wakefield learned of the team's intentions during spring training, and almost everyone involved with the club acknowledged that Wakefield was the obvious choice. He's been here the longest. He's endured the most. Wakefield regarded the assignment as an honor every bit as meaningful as pitching Game 1 of the World Series, and a fitting culmination to an off-season that had been an absolute blur.

  Worn and weary from the events of the fall, winter, and spring, the Red Sox had generally sputtered to start the season, losing four times during their season-opening six-game road trip. Wakefield had backboned one of the two victories, dueling New York right-hander Mike Mussina for more than six innings in an eventual 7–3 Red Sox win in the second game of the season on April 6. Precisely five days later, on April 11, Mussina again was the pitcher Wakefield was paired against, though the start of the game almost seemed anticlimactic. Some of the players who had left the Red Sox over the winter, including Lowe, returned to Boston for the ring ceremony and created a minor stir with fans in their new markets by wearing their old Sox jerseys. (Lowe, for instance, took some criticism for adorning his old number 32 after having signed a four-year, $36 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers.) But to the Boston fans, it was as if the players had never left, each member of the Sox receiving a resounding ovation for his part in Boston's historic victory.

  Wakefield, predictably, received one of the loudest ovations from the Fenway crowd.

  We know you better than them. Thanks for sticking it out.

  But then, Wakefield believed the cheers spoke to everyone in a different way.

  "The fans are so knowledgeable about the game and so passion ate about the team. You can hear that when all of our players are announced for the starting lineup or even on opening day," Wakefield said. "Each player has a uniqueness to the fans. There's a special connection there. I know I feel that special connection every time I walk on the field to take the ball."

  The game was anticlimactic, as it turned out, at least in the competitive sense. The Red Sox rolled. Wakefield threw 110 pitches in seven superb innings, allowing just five hits, two walks, and one unearned run as the Red Sox rumbled to leads of 4–0 and 7–1. The eventual 8–1 win gave the Red Sox their third victory in seven games—two of the victories coming in the only games started by Wakefield—and gave Sox players the grateful feeling that finally the party was over. They could move on with their lives and careers and turn once again to the business of trying to win another championship.

  "As special as it was, I think we all felt like we could finally put that to bed," Wakefield said.

  Wakefield also had other things on his mind, most notably a contract extension that would all but ensure his commitment to the Red Sox and their commitment to him. In discussions with agent Barry Meister, whom Wakefield had hired to handle his negotiations after the retirement of Dick Moss, Wakefield confided that remaining in Boston was his priority. He didn't want to go to free agency. He didn't want to play anywhere else. He had become as much a part of the community in Boston as his wife, Stacy, who had grown up in the Boston area. Wakefield considered himself a Bostonian as much as he considered himself a resident of Florida, and the idea of playing for another team did not appeal to him. When Meister reminded Wakefield that such an approach would hurt his leverage in negotiations—the agent was merely fulfilling his professional obligation—Wakefield expressed his complete understanding.

  Then he told Meister to negotiate the deal anyway.

  "I explained to him that the free-agent market is a strange and wonderful place," Meister said. "Tim kind of waved me off and said, 'This is not about the money.' He said, 'I prefer that we approach Boston now and that we make it clear I want to play with Boston for the rest of my career.'"

  And so, slightly more than a week after the opening day victory against the Yankees, Wakefield and the Red Sox conducted a press conference at Fenway Park to announce one of the most unique and creative deals in baseball history, if not all of professional sports. With Wakefield headed to free agency, the Red Sox extended his contract by one year for a salary of $4 million, with an option for the 2007 season at $4 million. If and when the Red Sox exercised that option, another $4 million option would be generated. And then another. And then another. In fact, the option regenerated every time the Red Sox exercised it, making Wakefield's contract essentially an infinite loop. So long as he continued to pitch reasonably well, and so long as he wanted to continue pitching, the deal all but ensured that Wakefield would pitch for no other team than the Red Sox, that he would never go to free agency, and that if and when the time came that the Red Sox no longer deemed him a worthwhile $4 million investment, he would effectively call it a career.

  Beyond the annual $4 million salary, Wakefield also could earn incentives based on health that could bump his earnings over $5 million annually, though those were just perks that would further reward him for a job well done.

  Under normal circumstances, throughout the business world of baseball, a contract like Wakefield's might have been frowned upon, even scoffed at by super-agents like the
renowned Scott Boras, who forever claimed to be representing the small man, the player, in the never-ending negotiations between "millionaires and billionaires." Such deals seemed to be far too team-friendly and failed to compensate the player adequately. But there was decidedly little objection to the contract that Wakefield signed with the Red Sox, and in fact his deal was heralded as groundbreaking—a creative device that allowed a team and a player to achieve a common goal together in unique circumstances.

  So, almost exactly 10 years after he first pitched in a game for the Red Sox, in May 1995, Wakefield indeed had become a unique case. The man whose career had been on the scrap heap was now seen as the consummate loyalist, the company man whose gold watch had taken the form of a contract for his professional life. Tim Wakefield had be come synonymous with the Red Sox franchise, with perseverance and hard work, with resiliency and selflessness. In committing to being a part of something much bigger than himself, he had become bigger than he could ever have imagined.

  The man with perhaps the most unique pitch in baseball history now had a contract to match.

  The beauty of experience, assuming one stays healthy, is that relatively little becomes unsettling. Most everything becomes a case of been there, done that. With the weight of 86 fruitless years having been lifted off the Boston organization, with a contract that would cover his professional life like an insurance policy, Tim Wakefield settled into some of the more comfortable years of his career. He entered the 2005 season with 114 career victories for Boston, needing just 10 more to surpass Bob Stanley (115), Pedro Martinez (117), Smoky Joe Wood (117), Luis Tiant (122), and Mel Parnell (123) and move into third place on the Red Sox all-time wins list.

  At that point, only two men would sit ahead of him, tied at 192 wins for the most in the history of the Red Sox franchise: Cy Young, a man for whom baseball's top pitching achievement was named, and Roger Clemens, who had just won the award for a record seventh time.