Knuckler (18 page)

If it goes that far, team representatives make arguments
against
a player whom the club soon will be asking to perform for them, creating a rather uncomfortable dynamic. Arbitration is a performance review to the nth degree, with sometimes millions of dollars at stake. Teams risk a great deal by taking a player to arbitration because, in the event of a team victory, the club often ends up with an unhappy, disgruntled player who is not likely to be especially productive. A player victory certainly might affect the team's budget, but such amounts are small potatoes to organizations like the Red Sox, who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

To a player like Tim Wakefield, however, every dollar made all the difference in the world, particularly during a young career that had been marked by instability.

Moss, who represented Wakefield when the matter went to a hearing, was not the same man who had represented Wakefield in negotiations with the team after Wakefield was released by the Pirates during the spring of 1995. Summoned by Wakefield's primary representative, Bill Moore, Moss was a longtime player advocate and staunch supporter of the Major League Baseball Players Association, the union that represented all major league players. Moss was far more familiar than Wakefield's old agent, Bill Moore, with labor issues, arbitration, and conflicts between players and teams. Though near the end of his career as an agent, Moss was an old-school, hard-nosed, no-nonsense businessman. Believing that Wakefield had the stronger case, he refused to settle. Just before the start of spring training, Moss and team representatives squared off in a hearing, Moss presenting both
Wakefield's statistics in Boston and the letter to season-ticket holders as evidence that Wakefield had considerable value to the franchise.

On the one hand, they're using him as a marketing tool. On the other, they're trying to argue that he should not be paid.

Wakefield won the case.

Still, as he prepared to report to spring training for the start of the 1997 season, Wakefield had his fair share of concerns. He was relieved that the matter had been settled in his favor, but he was still operating on a year-to-year basis. Because free agency was another three years away, his chance for a long-term contract might also have to wait that long. Wakefield desperately wanted the security of a long-term contract—wouldn't any knuckleballer?—and the arbitration hearing had been one of the colder, harsher reality checks that baseball could offer.
Why do I have to keep proving myself?
He had done everything the club asked him to do to that point in his Red Sox career—and succeeded—and he had made statistical sacrifices to accommodate the team. And yet, when he thought the club would acknowledge those sacrifices at contract time, Wakefield instead had to take the Sox to arbitration and argue his case.

Nonetheless, as spring training neared, Wakefield was more secure than he had been at perhaps any other time in his professional baseball career. The Red Sox needed pitching. He had a $2.5 million salary. And though Wakefield had been reintroduced to the cutthroat business side of the game, an underlying message he received throughout the winter had been impossible to ignore.

If the team was being truthful in its off-season letter to season-ticket holders, the Red Sox regarded him as a very big part of their future.

And that made Tim Wakefield feel wanted.

You live and die with it, and hopefully, you don't die too much.

—Knuckleballer Dennis Springer

A
QUIRKY AND TRADITIONAL
baseball fundamentalist who had a no-nonsense approach to most everything, Jimy Williams was the complete opposite of Kevin Kennedy, whose two-year stint in Boston had ended in ugly fashion. Tim Wakefield noticed the contrast immediately. While Kennedy had photos of movie stars in his office—Natalie Wood was a personal favorite for the California-based Kennedy, who was raised in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization—Wakefield saw Williams as the kind of manager who always seemed to be walking around with baseballs jammed into the rear pockets of his uniform pants, a fungo in his hands, the bill of his cap as flat as a serving tray. Williams looked like something drawn by an old newspaper cartoonist, and the new manager also possessed a wit that was, in a word, sharp.

On the field, too, Kennedy had catered to the superstars, while Williams embraced the role players, a priority that was made clear from the very first moment Williams addressed the Red Sox during spring training. He spoke of being
a team.
He stressed the value of all 25 men on the roster. Wakefield sensed that Jimy Williams took the job managing the Red Sox because he loved
baseball
and not necessarily the fame that came with being in the major leagues, an attitude that Wakefield found refreshing. To Tim Wakefield, Jimy Williams was
real.
And to someone like Jimy Williams, a hard-core baseball lifer who most recently had been the third-base coach of the wildly successful Atlanta Braves in the National League, Tim Wakefield was like every other player on his roster—someone who had value, no matter how specialized his skill or natural abilities.

Kennedy had treated Wakefield well during their two years together, but Kennedy's operating system also drew a clear line between the star players in the Red Sox clubhouse and those players who served more limited roles. Under the unconventional Jimy Williams, who frequently saw things that other baseball managers and coaches did not, Wakefield had no more or less value than anyone else, which was precisely the way Wakefield felt things should be.

"We're going to miss him dearly here," highly respected Braves general manager John Schuerholz said of Williams. "Jimy Williams was, to me, like a sidecar to [renowned Braves manager] Bobby Cox. That's how important he was to our team. Bobby relied on him immensely. . . . His strength is his absolute, top-to-bottom, in-depth knowledge of the game and a tenacity to succeed. He's a tough competitor. He has a real passion for baseball, and there isn't anyone that works harder than Jimy Williams. . . . Jimy is a guy who will leave no stone unturned to win."

Wakefield liked Williams almost immediately, largely because Williams not only treated all the players the same but was consistent in how he treated everyone in the organization, from the clubhouse attendants to the highest-paid players on the team. Every day, upon walking into the Red Sox clubhouse before the game, Williams would say hello to equipment manager Joe Cochran just as surely as he would say hello to someone like star first baseman Mo Vaughn, the power-hitting centerpiece of the team whom Williams would frequently call "Maurice." There were no theatrics, no melodrama, no hysterics. Every person deserved a hello. Williams's routine was almost always the same, win or lose, and it was very important to him to play the game properly. Once, Wakefield remembered, Williams apologized to the umpires for employing a positional player as a pitcher in a blowout loss, making it clear to the umps that he was trying to save arms, not make a mockery
of the game. Williams avoided any self-promotion and said he was trying to
do
right, not
be
right, placing great emphasis on the values that any successful team had to possess and that Wakefield truly believed in.

This guy gets it
.

On the field, Williams was a tremendous evaluator who knew almost instantly what types of contributions a player could make to the team. And he valued and gave considerable weight to every contribution, from the sacrifice bunt to the three-run home run, because he believed that such a perspective was necessary for both the success of his club and the health of his clubhouse. He had tremendous patience with young players and took the time to instruct them, work with them, and build their confidence. Williams understood the need for talent and appreciated those players who were truly gifted, but he had little use for the superstar
mentality
, which often gave managers headaches and could eat at the core of a team, the bonds of which he regarded as sacred.

For Wakefield, who never regarded himself as a superstar and never wanted to be one, the message was striking.

Jimy Williams has the same values I do.

The 1997 Red Sox were picked by few to be contenders for a playoff spot. The departure of Roger Clemens had left a gaping hole at the front end of the starting rotation, a group that now included, among others, left-hander Steve Avery, who had signed with the Red Sox as a free agent from the Braves. Wakefield and Avery had a great deal in common, both having been pitchers who burst onto the scene with National League playoff contenders. Their teams had faced one another in the 1992 National League Championship Series. In fact, a year earlier, Avery had been the phenom that Wakefield would become in 1992, posting an 18–8 record during the regular season and pitching absolutely brilliantly during the 1991 NLCS, when he won both of his starts (also against the Pirates) without allowing a run. Avery had seemed well on his way to a sensational career when suddenly he completely changed course: his combined 14–23 record over the 1995 and 1996 seasons ultimately inspired the Braves to cut bait and move on.

A tall, athletic left-hander whose fastball was clocked in the mid-90s at the peak of his career, Avery had all of the assets that traditional baseball evaluators want. He was big. He threw hard. He was even left-handed. And yet his career was fizzling rapidly, teaching a valuable lesson to anyone willing to notice.

That's just how the game works sometimes.

The knuckleball really has nothing to do with it.

It can happen with traditional pitchers, too.

Having had Avery in Atlanta, Williams lobbied for the Red Sox to sign the pitcher, and the move was precisely the kind that Duquette liked, too. Avery's stock was low. Like Wakefield in 1995, Avery was a good gamble, a low risk that could deliver potentially high rewards. He was an excellent competitor. He had played for a winning organization. The cost to the Red Sox was relatively minimal—$4.85 million for one year—and Duquette believed that, at worst, signing Avery could serve as a stopgap measure while the club tried to find a replacement for Clemens, who had anchored the staff since 1986. Further hedging his bets, Duquette also signed rehabilitating veteran right-hander Bret Saberhagen to an incentive-based contract that would pay huge dividends if the pitcher could regain form, though there was the question of when—or if—Saberhagen ever would return to full health.

Though Wakefield had no way of knowing it at the time, the arrival of Avery in particular would place Williams on firm ground in the Boston clubhouse. Unlike Kennedy, who could be volatile and often catered to star players, Williams was a hands-on manager who made almost every decision based on what was best for the team. In the season opener that year, against the Anaheim Angels, Williams had demonstrated the kind of instinct and perceptiveness that relatively few people in baseball possessed. The Red Sox were rallying in the ninth inning against Angels closer Troy Percival, an absurdly hard-throwing right-hander who had the potential for wildness. Percival was struggling with his control. Williams had opened that season with a platoon in right field—Troy O'Leary against right-handers, Rudy Pemberton against left-handers—and his initial plan was to have O'Leary pinch-hit for Pemberton against Percival in the ninth.

Once the manager saw Percival's wildness, he quickly changed course, pulling O'Leary back from the on-deck circle in favor of the right-handed-hitting Pemberton. The move seemed odd. While most major league managers would have embraced the opportunity to force their counterpart to make a move, leveraging someone like the typically dominating Percival
out
of a game, Williams did the opposite. He wanted to keep Percival
in.
A matchup of the left-handed-hitting O'Leary against the right-handed Percival might have inspired opposing manager Terry Collins to yank a struggling Percival from the game, and so Williams sent Pemberton up to bat instead.

Predictably, Collins stuck with Percival, who subsequently hit Pemberton with a pitch to force in a run and tie the game. His club now having blown a 5–2 lead, a frustrated Collins came out of the dugout and lifted Percival from the game. With right-handed-hitting catcher Bill Haselman due up, Collins called for right-handed pitcher Pep Harris. Williams then pulled back Haselman and sent up the left-handed-hitting O'Leary, who dribbled a ball up the third-base line that he beat out for a single to give the Red Sox a 6–5 edge.

After the Red Sox closed out the bottom of the ninth for a highly improbable 6–5 victory, Williams carefully explained himself, taking extra caution to make sure he did not belittle his counterpart, Collins. The game was humbling, Williams believed. Opponents were to be respected. And yet the simple truth was that Williams was two steps ahead of Collins throughout the ninth inning. He had managed the socks off the overmatched Angels skipper.

Wakefield took notice of Williams's strategy that night, recognizing the depth of the manager's knowledge, instinct, and evaluation skills.
He sees things that other people don't.
And while the 1997 Red Sox were a largely mediocre team that never threatened to make the playoffs—they went 78–84 en route to a fourth-place finish—there was reason for optimism. The Red Sox had a rookie shortstop, Nomar Garciaparra, who put together one of the great rookie seasons of all time. Wakefield marveled at his ability. And while Wakefield struggled through the early part of the season—difficulties that temporarily nudged him to the bullpen and required another (theretofore annual)
visit from Phil Niekro, aka Dr. Knuckles—he finished 12–15 with a 4.25 ERA while leading the Red Sox with 201⅓ innings pitched. That last number brought Wakefield's three-year running total with the team to 608⅓ innings, a number that was easily tops on the club.

Along the way, Wakefield and others continued to feel the influence of their new manager, who proved to be as bold as he was unconventional. Late in the year, with the Red Sox fading from contention, Duquette ordered the demotion of Avery from the starting rotation to the bullpen, a move that had huge implications for the pitcher. When Avery had signed with the Red Sox, his contract included an option for the 1998 season at $3.9 million that would vest when the pitcher made his 18th start of the year. The provision had been designed to reward Avery, who had suffered some physical problems in Atlanta, if he remained healthy. With the Red Sox out of contention—and with Avery's performance having failed to meet expectations—Red Sox officials had instructed Williams to pull Avery from the rotation after his 17th start. This order became highly publicized (particularly in the absence of any meaningful games late in the year) and triggered a standoff between Williams and the man who had just hired him.