Knuckler

by Tim Wakefield

  And while most of the Red Sox already knew that, they would soon get another firsthand look at what Tim Wakefield could do.

  In Boston the 2007 baseball season will go down as one of the most unusual in Red Sox history for one very simple reason: almost nothing went wrong. Fortified during an off-season in which club ownership and management committed in excess of $200 million to long-term contracts for outfielder J. D. Drew, shortstop Julio Lugo, and Japanese pitching import Daisuke Matsuzaka, the Red Sox burst from the gate with a near-perfect blend of pitching, defense, offense, youth, and experience. The club was a certifiable wrecking machine, posting a 36–15 record in its first 51 games, a pace that would have translated into 114 victories over the course of a 162-game schedule.

  Wakefield had no idea at the time that the season would produce a second World Series title in the span of four seasons.

  Or that he would be faced with the supreme sacrifice along the way.

  For the first time in months, Wakefield felt entirely healthy when he took the mound at the start of the season—and it showed. With Mirabelli still behind the plate, Wakefield allowed a total of nine earned runs in his first seven starts. Though he was just 4–3 during that span—two of his losses were by scores of 2–0 and 3–1—Wakefield had a sparkling 1.79 ERA. Once a knuckleballer who threw other pitches at the most predictable times, he now had fully morphed into a more complete pitcher who, while still relying largely on the knuckleball, would throw fastballs, curveballs, and cut fastballs in far more unlikely scenarios, a transformation that had gradually taken place over the course of a career that was still, incredibly, evolving.

  At 40, Tim Wakefield saw his age as a benefit, fulfilling the prophecies set forth by Niekro.

  Use the uncertainty to your advantage.

  If you learn to command this pitch, you can pitch until you're 45.

  At their peak, the 2007 Red Sox led the American League East by a stunning 11½ games as late as July 5. Although the lead would shrink dramatically in the final weeks of the season, the Red Sox were never in danger of missing the playoffs. Wakefield completely hit his stride in the final stages of the year, ripping off a span of 11 consecutive starts during which he went 9–2 with a 3.69 ERA. The possessor of a 7–8 record before the streak, Wakefield was 16–10 by the end of it, a run that grew additionally impressive when catcher Kevin Cash seamlessly stepped in and replaced Mirabelli, who had been sidelined by a calf strain. This time the results didn't change with the change in catchers. In Cash, the Red Sox and Wakefield both had found an invaluable insurance policy, another catcher with soft hands and the gumption to take on the knuckleball, a reassuring development given the events of October 2004 and beyond.

  If Doug isn't back there for some reason, we'll still be fine.

  By offering Cash a pointer or two on how to handle Wakefield's knuckler, Mirabelli helped the new catcher make a swift transition. Like Mirabelli, Cash was a light-hitting, soft-handed receiver who had some power, but the knuckleball tested his skills to the nth degree. Mirabelli suggested, among other things, that Cash turn his body slightly toward the right side of the infield, as if he were squared up with the second baseman, a tip that paid immediate dividends. Wakefield reached the final month of the season pitching some of the best baseball of his career—for a team that had been destined for the playoffs for months.

  And then, once again, the knuckleballer learned that he was susceptible to unpredictable dips and turns.

  Wakefield's shoulder began bothering him, a problem that persisted throughout the month and affected his delivery, undermining his command of the knuckleball. Though his last outing of the season was a relatively good one, he went 1–2 with an 8.76 ERA in September. The Red Sox suddenly were faced with an uncomfortable decision: would they include Wakefield on their active roster for the first round of the playoffs against the Angels? This dilemma immediately prompted comparisons to 1999. Wakefield himself wondered, Are they going to do it to me again? The team's decision to leave him off the active roster for the 1999 ALCS against the Yankees had scarred him, inflicting a wound that had never truly healed. As surely as Wakefield remembered, so did Epstein and Francona, though they had had nothing to do with Wakefield's dismissal from active status eight years earlier.

  Because of a change in baseball rules, the decision would be different for the Sox than it had been in 1999. Earlier, had Wakefield been injured during the series against the Yankees, the team would have lost his services for the balance of the series and been unable to replace him unless or until they reached the next round, in that case the World Series. With this rule in place, Sox officials had all but entirely eliminated Wakefield from their decision-making about the playoffs roster. But now teams in the playoffs were allowed to replace injured players in the middle of a series, and so the decision was slightly more complicated. The team would sacrifice little by trotting Wakefield out to the mound, but the price for the pitcher was considerable.

  If Wakefield had to be replaced, he would be ineligible for the next round—the ALCS, against whom the Sox would face the Yankees or Cleveland Indians. Wakefield thus had to decide whether he wanted to pitch earlier in the playoffs or later—assuming the Sox won. He came to the obvious conclusion with team officials during a meeting at the end of the regular season.

  He sat out the first round.

  "We made [the decision] as a team," Wakefield said. "Trust me, it was a hard decision to make when I was sitting in that office. It's hard to take yourself out of the equation sometimes. Instinct says, 'I'll do it, give me the ball and I'll do whatever you want me to do,' but in a short series with the rules changing, I didn't want to hurt us."

  As it turned out, the decision proved to be a good one for both the player and the team: the Red Sox wiped out the Angels in three consecutive games while Wakefield benefited from the additional rest. It was the best of both worlds for everyone. After the Indians defeated the Yankees in six games, Boston and Cleveland were set to face off against one another in the American League Championship Series, by which point Wakefield's shoulder had sufficiently improved for him to give pitching a try. Francona lined up his rotation so that Wakefield would take the ball in Game 4, following Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling, and Daisuke Matsuzaka, in that order. The Game 4 start meant that Wakefield would get just one start in the series, but the knuckleballer was on board for a very simple reason.

  Realistically, he couldn't pitch more than that.

  Wakefield was proud of his versatility and resiliency throughout his career—on short rest, between starts, whatever the situation called for—and so it was a most unusual situation he found himself in late in 2007. Suddenly, he could not bounce back as quickly. Making even a regular turn was out of the question. Once able to pitch on as little as two days of rest, Wakefield now needed closer to 10 days between starts "to recoup." The injury had been diagnosed as a strain in the back of his shoulder—a common injury for pitchers that could result from wear and tear—and it had robbed Wakefield of one of his greatest strengths: durability. Nonetheless, he could still pitch—or try to—though the problem typically intensified as a game progressed.

  Still, it was worth a shot.

  Having taken over first place in the division on April 18 and swept the Angels in the first round of the playoffs, the Red Sox found themselves in an unusual situation after winning Game 1 of the Cleveland series but losing Games 2 and 3: they were behind. Wakefield had little doubt about the team's ability to come back, and he took the mound in Game 4 with a good deal of confidence. Matched against Cleveland craftsman Paul Byrd—a soft-throwing right-hander who had built a solid career on smarts and guile—Wakefield held the Indians scoreless through four innings. The Indians then rallied in the fifth, chasing Wakefield from the game when five men reached base during a span of seven hitters that staked Cleveland to a 2–0 lead.

  Going into the game, Francona knew that he would have to watch Wakefield closely, paying close attention to the pitch
er's delivery, fa cial expression, and mechanics. Other people may not know how much he's hurting, but I do. That fact prompted Francona to lift Wakefield earlier than usual—Byrd, too, was pitching well—but the move backfired when reliever Manny Delcarmen entered and allowed a three-run home run to Jhonny Peralta that gave the Indians a bulging 5–0 advantage. The Indians tacked on a pair of additional runs to take a 7–0 lead en route to a resounding 7–3 victory that gave Cleveland a 3–1 series edge and eliminated any remaining margin of error for the Red Sox.

  With one more loss, Boston's season would be over.

  Having played with the Red Sox prior to 2004 and gone through that year's comeback against New York, Wakefield now recognized the change in the team's psyche and mentality. We're not dead yet. We came back against the Yankees when we were down by more, and we can do the same to Cleveland. The Red Sox had an extremely high level of confidence when playing at Fenway Park, and they believed that they still had every chance to win the series if they could just get through Game 5 in Cleveland, a contest in which they had one very big factor in their favor.

  Josh Beckett.

  Now in his second season after being acquired from the Florida Marlins, Beckett was coming off a 20-win regular season and was positively dominating in his first two starts of the postseason, both victories. Like many of the staff aces who pitched for the Sox during Wakefield's career—Clemens, Martinez, Schilling—Beckett was a fierce competitor. Wakefield respected that about him. He saw Beckett as having a maturity beyond his years, a presence that relatively few young players possessed. Wakefield would watch with great pride as Beckett slowly matured into a leader of the pitching staff over the course of their careers together in Boston, and he respected the way Beckett went about his business: the young right-hander expected to win, but made no excuses when he lost.

  When Wakefield awoke on the morning of Game 5, he was in agony. Overnight—as he knew it would—the pain in the back of his shoulder had intensified. The start against Cleveland had been his only outing in 17 days, and Wakefield knew that such acute pain in his shoulder was not a good sign.

  "The next day," he said, "I couldn't pull the covers off me when I woke up."

  Knowing he would not be able to pitch again in the series, Wakefield watched as Beckett dominated again in Game 5, pitching the Red Sox to a 7–1 win that sent the series back to Boston. Back at Fenway Park, the Red Sox vanquished the Indians in Games 5 and 6, winning by scores of 12–2 and 11–2. The victories brought Boston's advantage over the final three games of the series to a mind-numbing 30–5, a total that actually increased to 33–5 when taking into account the fact that the Red Sox had also scored the final three runs of Game 4.

  Collectively, it was as if the Red Sox were coasting along until that moment when they actually needed to, well, play.

  Okay, time to get serious.

  With another trip to the World Series now a reality—this time the opponent would be the Colorado Rockies—the Red Sox had only two days to catch their breath and begin preparing for Game 1, to be played at Fenway Park on October 24. For Wakefield, the two-day respite offered an opportunity to assess the health of his shoulder and the strength of his arm, both of which had both him and team officials concerned. Everyone agreed that he should try to throw from a mound in between the ALCS and the World Series—in what is typically referred to as a side session—and the results were poor. With pitching coach John Farrell at his side, Wakefield labored to get the ball to the plate. His shoulder ached. Though he had taken a cortisone injection in September, the problem now was worsening again, to the point where Wakefield wondered whether he could pitch even once in a seven-game series, let alone twice.

  "I could hardly play catch," Wakefield said. "It was still bothering me. I was trying to throw a side, and I had to cut it short because I couldn't even reach the plate. [Red Sox officials] told me they wanted me to pitch Game 2 and Game 6, if possible, and I told them, 'I don't even know if I can pitch Game 2.' It sucked. I wanted to pitch, but I was also worried. What if I tried to warm up and I couldn't go? Then what? I couldn't look the other 24 guys in the face if that happened."

  With media members eagerly awaiting Francona's announcement with regard to his pitching plans for the series, Wakefield met with his manager, pitching coach, and assorted team officials, including the medical staff, to discuss his fate. Because of the inflammation in his shoulder, doctors said, Wakefield could suffer lasting damage to his shoulder if he elected to pitch. It was yet another thing to consider. Wakefield wanted to pitch not only in the World Series but in the future, and he also wanted to do what was best for the team first. He was stuck. Recognizing Wakefield's contributions to the organization and maintaining respect for his status as a veteran, Sox officials effectively put the matter in Wakefield's hands.

  If you want to try, we'll let you try. It's the last round of the playoffs anyway. We can replace you without any real penalty. You have the right to make this decision.

  Indeed, if Wakefield was unable to pitch, the Sox had Jon Lester on standby to pitch in his place, though that would require a reshuffling of the rotation. Nonetheless, the Sox had the pitching and the patience to let Wakefield decide. Lester's presence certainly made his decision easier, but that was not what concerned the knuckleballer. Again, Wakefield was unsure if he could pitch one game, let alone two. If he could not warm up, the pitching plans for Game 2 would be thrust into a state of chaos because the Red Sox would not be able to replace him until after the game. The same was true if he had to leave the field during the game because of injury or ineffectiveness. This was the World Series, after all, and one game or one pitch could make the difference in the outcome, something Wakefield knew all too well from the experiences of 2003 and 2004.

  If I pitch and get hurt—and if that costs us the World Series—I'm not sure I can live with that.

  And so Tim Wakefield did what he almost always did.

  He thought of the group first.

  And he pulled the plug on himself.

  ***

  The 2007 World Series, like the one in 2004, was a landslide. The hottest team in baseball, the Colorado Rockies were entering a best-of-seven set with the Red Sox having won 21 of their 22 previous games in the regular season. The Rockies won 14 of 15 to end the regular season before sweeping their way through the first two rounds of the playoffs, at which point they encountered a long layoff as they waited for the Red Sox and Indians to play out the ALCS.

  When the Rockies finally returned to the field, they encountered a Red Sox team that was hotter.

  With the rotation now shuffled to accommodate Lester, who would go in Game 4, the Red Sox won by a 13–1 score behind the steamrolling Beckett in Game 1. In order, Schilling, Matsuzaka, and Lester then closed out a series in which the Red Sox outscored the Rockies by a 29–10 margin, bringing Boston's lopsided scoring edge to an incredible 62–15 over the final 67 innings of the postseason. Lester pitched 5⅔ scoreless innings in Boston's 4–3 victory in Game 4, a game in which Wakefield joined the large majority of onlookers rooting for a young man who was one of the brightest prospects in the Red Sox system.

  Like many of the Red Sox, Wakefield took a particular interest in Lester, a highly regarded prospect who had joined the major league team in 2006. Late that same year, Lester had been diagnosed with large cell lymphoma, a treatable form of cancer. A native of Tacoma, Washington, Lester spent the subsequent winter being treated at the Fred Hutchinson Center in Seattle, then returned to the Red Sox in 2007. The team brought him along slowly. From the very start, Wakefield liked Lester's work ethic and attitude, and he found the young man to be understated and respectful, different from some of the brash young players coming up from the minor leagues. This kid gets it. Wakefield had spent countless hours visiting children in Boston-area hospitals during his career with the Red Sox, and he had lost his grandfather, named Lester, to cancer.

  Throughout Lester's Game 4 performance, Wakefield said nothing to
him during the course of the game. Baseball etiquette generally calls for pitchers to be left alone in the middle of an outing, and so Wakefield stayed away, silently pulling for Lester from the dugout. Attaboy, Jon. Keep it going. Only when Lester was lifted from the game, with 17 outs to his credit, did Wakefield rise from his seat and climb to the top steps of the dugout, where he greeted his young replacement with a handshake and a hug.

  You've made us proud.

  In the immediate aftermath of the victory at Coors Field in Denver, Wakefield celebrated with his teammates on the field, just as the Sox had done in St. Louis. Longtime Sox veteran Mike Timlin placed his arm around Wakefield and, in plain sight of television cameras, commended his teammate for doing the right thing and making the ultimate sacrifice. The image further enhanced Wakefield's rightful reputation as a team guy, not a me guy, and the expression on Wakefield's face and his watery eyes delivered a clear message to Red Sox fans who had long since learned what he stood for.

  You have no idea how hard this was for me.

  In Boston, during the victory celebration that followed, the Red Sox once again rode duck boats through the city streets to reward a fan base that had gone, seemingly overnight, from destitution to an embarrassment of riches. Devoid of a World Series championship for 86 years, the Red Sox now had won two titles in four years. The significance of the fact that the Red Sox had a cast of young players who had performed well in the series—from Lester and Matsuzaka to second baseman Dustin Pedroia to center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury—was impossible to overlook. The Red Sox were not about their past anymore, but about the future.

  Wakefield took a great deal of pride in that development. During his career, the Red Sox had changed.

  For the better.