Knuckler

by Tim Wakefield

  Though Wakefield had pitched in just one game during the postseason—Boston went 11–3 in the playoffs, the same record the team posted in 2004—Red Sox fans hardly overlooked him, applauding him for his decision to effectively withdraw from the World Series. The signs carried by some fans that declared him the "unsung hero" of the 2007 Red Sox made Wakefield very proud. He had been in Boston for 13 seasons, longer than any other member of the Red Sox, and he had immersed himself in the community. He had never claimed to be a superstar. He tried to show up every day and do his job, to invest in the community, to become one of them, and the support shown by Red Sox fans in the aftermath of the World Series assured him that they understood, that they recognized his sacrifices, and that they had accepted him as readily as he had accepted them.

  At that moment, Tim Wakefield was a man who, after spending much of his career feeling alienated because of his affiliation with the knuckleball, felt as if he truly belonged.

  Twelve

  I don't want anybody to panic. I'm not pitching. I'm just throwing out the first ball.

  —Phil Niekro, prior to a ceremonial appearance at the World Series

  FROM ROGER CLEMENS to Mo Vaughn to Nomar Garciaparra to Pedro Martinez, Tim Wakefield had seen a succession of superstars leave the Red Sox by one method or another. He could hardly have been surprised when Manny Ramirez joined the list.

  Ramirez's time in Boston had had its share of controversial events, though most of them were disputes with management stemming from Ramirez's general unhappiness in Boston. Wakefield never had a single problem with the slugger. Ramirez was not the kind of player who developed close relationships with teammates, but Wakefield generally found him to be a positive presence on the field and in the clubhouse, where Ramirez's feats and antics could be, to say the least, entertaining. As a right-handed hitter, in Wakefield's eyes, Ramirez was peerless. As for his comedic value, that often spoke for itself.

  Once, during a tense game with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Ramirez dropped a routine fly in shallow left field, allowing the tying run to score in a game the Red Sox had led, 1–0, with two outs in the top of the ninth inning. Upon returning to a dugout where the tension was palpable, a self-deprecating Ramirez quietly placed his hat and glove on the bench, then sarcastically wondered aloud whether he had just cost himself a Gold Glove. Wakefield and the rest of the Red Sox exploded with laughter. (The Sox then went on to win that game, 2–1.) Moments like that became customary with Ramirez during his time in Boston, and Red Sox officials, players, and fans alike were willing to chalk up Ramirez's shenanigans to nothing more than Manny being Manny.

  And yet, Wakefield was among those who noticed a change in the player in 2008, when Ramirez's frustrations over his contract status reached a new level and he became so unhappy in Boston that he was involved in a pair of physical altercations.

  The first, in early June, came during a game between the Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays at Fenway Park. Wakefield was seated in the dugout, not far from Ramirez, when Kevin Youkilis returned to the dugout after a frustrating at-bat. Known for his volatility, Youkilis began slamming equipment, and Ramirez chastised his teammate for childish behavior. Wakefield sensed tension building. Uh-oh. Ramirez and Youkilis suddenly began shoving each other before Wakefield leaped from the bench and wedged himself between his two teammates, all as television cameras caught the Red Sox in a boys-will-be-boys moment that turned out to be so much more.

  Indeed, the incident would not be the last time that season Wakefield sprang from his chair to wonder what silliness Ramirez was up to now.

  Only a few weeks later, Wakefield was sitting at his locker prior to a game with the Houston Astros when he heard shouting from what players sometimes referred to as the food room, an area that effectively served as the kitchen. What the hell is that? Again, Wakefield got up from his seat. This time a flock of teammates had beaten him to the spot: Wakefield found Ramirez being held away from 60-something traveling secretary Jack McCormick, whom Ramirez had angrily pushed to the ground during a heated dispute. Ramirez's request for more tickets had been denied on a day when McCormick's supply was decidedly thin.

  The matter was quickly settled, but Wakefield, like most everyone else around the Red Sox, saw this incident as being entirely different from past episodes of Manny being Manny.

  He really wants out this time.

  Indeed, for all of Ramirez's behavioral flare-ups during his time in Boston, almost everyone agreed on two points: Ramirez generally had remained harmless, and the team, overall, was not affected. Wakefield was not the only one who found it astounding that Ramirez could continue to enter the batter's box and hit as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had just taken place. Once coupled with Ortiz, in fact, Ramirez became part of such a potent tandem that it was impossible to mention one without the other. During the five full seasons Ramirez and Ortiz were full-time lineup mates—from roughly June 1, 2003, to May 31, 2008—the Red Sox scored 4,475 runs, second in all of baseball to only the New York Yankees (4,499). They averaged 5.5 runs per game. The Sox had won two World Series and been to the playoffs four times, and the performance of their dynamic duo in postseason play was positively mind-numbing.

  And yet, personality-wise, Ortiz and Ramirez could not have been more different. Wakefield found that somewhat amusing. Where Ramirez would withdraw from the team, Ortiz was a much softer sort who engaged with people. Most people on the team, including Wakefield, became friendly with Ortiz. "Big Papi" did not give his manager headaches, did not antagonize management, and was far more apt to put his arm around a frustrated teammate than confront him in the dugout, as Ramirez had done with Youkilis. Wakefield saw Ramirez and Ortiz as being complete opposites.

  The only thing they really have in common is that they can hit.

  By the end of July, albeit for reasons beyond anyone's control, even that was no longer true. Ortiz was on the disabled list with a wrist injury. And so, on July 31, 2008, in a move that was shocking on some levels and entirely unsurprising on others, the Red Sox executed a three-team trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates that sent Ramirez to the West Coast (and not so coincidentally, the National League) while bringing talented, hardworking outfielder Jason Bay to Boston. The deal may have sent ripples throughout major league baseball, but Wakefield was hardly surprised when he learned about the trade from media reports on a day when the Red Sox had no game scheduled.

  I think we all saw this coming.

  While Ramirez's departure signified the end of yet another era in Boston, Wakefield wondered if it also triggered the start of a new one, particularly with the Red Sox in another race for the playoffs and, perhaps, a World Series championship. He had played with Clemens, Vaughn, and Garciaparra, all of whom had been drafted by the Red Sox. During his time with the team, Martinez and Lowe had been brought in and then cast off. Schilling, as it would turn out, had pitched his last game in the 2007 World Series—a shoulder injury would force his retirement later in 2008—and now Ramirez had come full circle during his time in Boston, too.

  Incredibly, Tim Wakefield and his unpredictable knuckleball had become the hub around which the Red Sox carousel had been turning for years.

  He had outlasted them all.

  When he arrived for the start of the season, before the Ramirez drama, Wakefield had known there would be questions. He was approaching his 42nd birthday. A shoulder injury had prevented him from pitching down the stretch in 2007. Wakefield had spent the winter reconditioning himself, and time had worn away some of the versatility he once possessed as a knuckleballer.

  I'm just not as durable as I used to be.

  Wakefield opened some eyes that year when he said that one of his goals was to "make my 32 starts and give the club 200-plus innings," but that objective was not so far-fetched. Only a few years earlier, when Wakefield had totaled 225⅓ innings during a 2005 season in which he celebrated his 39th birthday, he had joined a group that, since 1980, included just 2
7 pitchers who had compiled at least 225 innings at the age of 38 or older. Of those 27, nine—or one-third of them—had been knuckleballers. By then, everyone knew that knuckleballers constituted maybe 1 percent of all pitchers in baseball at any given time, yet depending on where one drew the line, they could constitute an amazing 33 percent of a list like this one.

  Tim Wakefield was feeling every bit his age—he was now a father of two—but he also had history on his side.

  And even Wakefield himself admitted that he began giving thought to his legacy.

  "I wanted to get to 200 wins, and I wanted to maybe tie or break Cy Young's and Roger Clemens's record for all-time Red Sox [victories]," Wakefield said, "but I didn't know if it was possible."

  Not long after the July 31 trading deadline, Tim Wakefield's shoulder flared up again, in essentially the same area that had ailed him at the end of the previous season. The problem reached an apex during an August 6 game at Kansas City that produced an 8–2 Red Sox victory and in which Wakefield contributed six strong innings for his seventh win of the season. To that point in the season, Wakefield had been averaging 6⅓ innings per start, compiled 147 innings, and posted a 3.67 ERA, numbers suggesting that, when healthy, he was still quite effective.

  The Red Sox, fearing a flameout like the one that had derailed Wakefield the previous season, immediately pulled the plug on him and gave him a cortisone injection in hopes of preempting a larger issue. Wakefield was all too eager to comply. He did not want to go through the prior season's pain again. Meanwhile, the Red Sox were having other issues with their pitching staff—a not uncommon problem for teams that advance deep into the playoffs a year earlier. Ace Josh Beckett was ailing, and the innings were beginning to pile up on every Red Sox pitcher. As the Red Sox had learned in 2005, if the pitching staff's postseason sacrifices were going to come due, it was likely to happen late in the year, when fatigue invariably became a factor.

  Wakefield ultimately missed only 20 days before returning from the disabled list, a far shorter absence than the previous season. He returned for an August 26 start against New York at Yankee Stadium, pitching five innings in a 7–3 victory for the Red Sox. At the time, Wakefield knew that trip was likely to be his last to Yankee Stadium: the Yankees were scheduled to move into a new ballpark beginning in 2009, and it was unlikely that Boston would face New York in the playoffs because, quite simply, the Yankees weren't going to qualify. The Tampa Bay Rays and the Red Sox, in that order, were running first and second in the American League East, and both seemed destined for the postseason. Oddly enough, the Yankees were on the outside looking in.

  New York was where it had all happened for Wakefield—the home run to Boone, the comeback in 2004, the nadir of his Red Sox career and the subsequent redemption. Wakefield had come to love the trips to New York. He appreciated the history of the park. He had been a part of that history. He regarded Yankee Stadium, like Fenway Park, as a "cathedral," as "hallowed ground." It was playing in New York and Boston especially that reminded him of just how privileged he had been to have a professional baseball career and to get a chance to play in those places.

  Wakefield kept a pair of baseballs as mementos from his final game at the Stadium. Clubhouse attendant Lou Cucuzza gave Wakefield a handful of dirt from the playing field. Wakefield wondered whether the younger members of the Red Sox really appreciated Yankee Stadium as much as he did, but then he realized: how could they? He himself had pitched in Game 7 in 2003. He had celebrated following Game 7 in 2004.

  The start on August 26 was Wakefield's 25th and final career regular or postseason appearance at Yankee Stadium, where he went 7–8 with a 3.90 ERA. His 115⅓ innings at the Stadium during that span were more than anyone else on the team. Wakefield had recorded precisely 346 outs during his career at the most storied baseball stadium in American history, no small achievement for a man who had been released by the Pittsburgh Pirates 14 seasons earlier.

  I've outlasted Yankee Stadium, too.

  As it turned out, Tim Wakefield's hopes for the 2008 season were somewhat optimistic. He failed to make 32 starts, and he failed to pitch 200-plus innings.

  But he came pretty darned close.

  By the time the Red Sox wrapped up a fifth postseason appearance in six seasons, Wakefield had totaled 30 starts and 181 innings while posting a 10–11 record and 4.13 ERA. Now 42, he finished second to only 24-year-old left-hander Lester in both starts and innings pitched. Wakefield's totals, in fact, were quite comparable to Beckett's, who finished 12–10 with a 4.03 ERA in 174⅓ innings during a season in which the workload from 2007 indisputably caught up with him, wore him down, and sidelined him.

  Earlier in the 2008 season, Beckett had turned 28.

  Because of additional open dates in the first round of the playoffs, the Red Sox needed only three starting pitchers against the Los Angeles Angels, who by then had become a familiar opponent. Lester, Beckett, and Matsuzaka were Terry Francona's choices, a decision that left Wakefield sidelined—at least for the first round. Matsuzaka had enjoyed a productive season during which he went 18–3 with a 2.95 ERA, though he had posted those numbers in fewer innings than Wakefield and along the way had earned a rather dubious distinction: among major league starting pitchers in history who had won at least 18 games, nobody had ever done so while recording fewer outs than Matsuzaka. For Wakefield, year after year, it was as if the Red Sox regarded the knuckleball as having a "low battery" warning—a pitch that had enough life to make it through September but needed to be shelved once the biggest games of the year arrived. It's good enough to get us there, but dangerous to us now.

  Wakefield had long since grown accustomed to that line of thought.

  The Red Sox prevailed over the Angels in four games of a first-round series that were decided by three runs, two runs, one run, and one run, respectively. The Red Sox were underdogs in the series—the Angels had won 100 games during the season—and so the series again highlighted the club's change in karma: the Red Sox, who historically so often lost when they should have won, were now winning when they should have lost.

  With a seven-game series now looming against the younger, hungry Tampa Bay Rays, Wakefield was scheduled to pitch Game 4, a responsibility that grew in importance with the Red Sox facing a 2–1 series deficit. Though the Sox won Game 1, Tampa had rebounded with resounding victories in Games 2 and 3 by the combined score of 18–9, the latter game a 9–1 victory over Game 1 playoff starter Lester. The Rays were hot when Wakefield stepped up to the mound at Fenway Park for Game 4, and they kept up the pace against Wakefield, who was starting for the first time in 16 days. Tampa raced to a 3–0 lead in the first inning on home runs by Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria, then added two more runs in the third on a homer by Willy Aybar. His team reeling from one Tampa haymaker after the next, Francona lifted Wakefield in favor of youngster Justin Masterson, who stymied the Rays only briefly in what eventually became a 13–4 Tampa win.

  Though Wakefield was disappointed and frustrated by the outing, he was also wise enough to know that the Rays were rolling—They're red hot, he thought—and might be impossible to stop.

  What Wakefield did not know at the time was that the game might have been the last postseason outing of his career.

  Picking up right where they left off in Game 4, the Rays teed off on Matsuzaka at the start of Game 5, racing to a 5–0 lead after three innings and once again forcing Francona into his bullpen in the early innings. By the middle of the seventh inning, the score was 7–0 in favor of the Rays. For Wakefield, the series felt eerily similar to Boston's first-round meeting with the Chicago White Sox in 2005, when the White Sox swept the Red Sox and advanced to the ALCS and, later, the World Series. The Rays were hitting everything thrown to the plate, no matter who threw it, no matter where. The Red Sox had nine outs remaining in their season when the seemingly impossible happened.

  They rallied for an 8–7 win.

  Scoring eight times in the final three innings—four in the sevent
h, three in the eighth, one in the ninth—the Red Sox forced the series back to Florida for a sixth game. Again, the Sox had won when they should have lost. Boston claimed Game 6 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg to set up a decisive Game 7, a seemingly impossible achievement given how weary and battered the Red Sox were. Beckett was pitching hurt. Closer Jonathan Papelbon was exhausted. The Red Sox were playing in their second ALCS in 13 months—their fourth in six seasons—and each time the series had followed a similar pattern. In 2003 the Sox trailed in games 3–2 before forcing a seventh game (the Aaron Boone game) in New York; in 2004 they had trailed the Yankees 3–0 before winning the next four; in 2007 the Sox trailed the Indians 3–1 before ripping off three straight wins; and now, in 2008, the Sox had trailed the Rays in games 3–1, and trailed in Game 5 by a 7–0 score in the seventh inning, only to come back and again force a final, decisive, seventh game.

  Wakefield, a member of all those teams, took a great deal of pride and satisfaction in how they played the game.

  Take it to the limit.

  In the end, the 2008 season proved more like 2003 than 2004 or 2007, though it was devoid of the late-game dramatics that resulted in Wakefield facing Aaron Boone. Sox starter Lester pitched quite well only to be outdueled by Rays right-hander Matt Garza, who was brilliant. Late in the game, likable Rays manager Joe Maddon summoned rookie left-hander David Price into the game in a key situation, and the fireballing Price whipped a called third strike past Sox outfielder J. D. Drew to end a Red Sox threat with the bases loaded. The 3–1 Tampa victory ended a long, grueling Red Sox season.

  In retrospect, in summoning an unproven young pitcher into a critical situation, Maddon had made a bold, admirable decision that helped raise his profile and standing throughout a baseball world that already regarded him as a creative, unconventional thinker.

  Less than a year later, Maddon would prove that again.