Knuckler (23 page)

And then there was this statistic: during the 1997 season, the year before Martinez arrived in Boston, the Red Sox had ranked 12th in the
American League in team ERA with Kerrigan as their pitching coach. In the two years after Martinez joined the staff, Boston had ranked second in 1998 and first in 1999. The obvious conclusion was that the pitchers made a great deal more difference than the pitching coach, a fact that made Kerrigan's résumé look a good deal more like Ringo Starr's than John Lennon's or Paul McCartney's.

For Wakefield, Kerrigan was a positively terrible match, a pitching coach who had little use or desire to understand the true value of the knuckleball. What people like Duquette and Williams saw in the knuckler, Kerrigan did not. To him, it was as unreliable as a trick chair, likely to produce a fall or collapse for the next sap foolish enough to ride it. With conventional pitchers, Kerrigan often applied an analytical approach based on data accumulated over large chunks of time, numbers that inevitably revealed patterns and tendencies. If statistics showed that right-handed pitchers could neutralize someone like Cleveland Indians slugger Manny Ramirez with curveballs and sliders to the outside of the plate, then the Red Sox were likely to employ precisely that strategy, no matter who was on the mound. The evidence was what mattered. Kerrigan often molded the pitchers to the strategy instead of the other way around, discounting the specific skill sets of the pitchers on the Boston staff.

With Wakefield, of course, such an approach was futile because he almost always threw one pitch, the knuckleball, regardless of who was hitting, or where, or when. Wakefield believed, as Niekro had taught him, that the knuckleball was
the only pitch in baseball where, every time you throw it, it can be an out pitch.
Kerrigan, by contrast, saw the knuckler as something to which no hard data could be applied, the squarest of square pegs, a pitch that minimized his value as a pitching coach and rendered him virtually useless anytime Wakefield pitched.

In that way, Joe Kerrigan seemed to put his values before the contributions from his pitchers, a colossal error in judgment that greatly minimized Wakefield's contributions during a span of seasons in which the Red Sox, coincidentally or not, never reached their true potential as a team.

Wakefield did not have a terrible year in 2000 so much as he had
a terribly unfulfilling one. At 33 years old, entering what should have been the prime of his career as a knuckleballer, Wakefield pitched in 51 games and made just 17 starts. He finished 13 games and did not record a save, which is to say that the Red Sox used him largely in mop-up situations in which the knuckleball's irregularities could not hurt them (or help them, for that matter). For Wakefield, the frustration boiled over in the middle of the season when he was summoned into a 15–1 game against the New York Yankees and asked to record the final four outs of a historic 22–1 defeat. In the span of a year, Wakefield had gone from bullpen savior to punching bag—at least in his mind—and he was at such a loss to explain his fall from grace that he did something very rare for him—he erupted.

"What do you want to know, that I was publicly embarrassed?" said an angry Wakefield. "I'm sick and tired of it. I feel like I'm being punished or penalized for being a team player. It's hard to swallow how I go from being a number-two or number-three starter, winning 13 games and pitching 200 innings a year, to being a fill-in guy, a mop-up. What they did to me was wrong, and you can ask any guy in here and they'd agree with you.

"People might think I'm crying, and I know I'm getting paid, but money is not the issue," he continued. "It's about respect. It's about loyalty. . . . There's nothing they can tell me that will make me feel better."

Indeed, while it was highly unusual for Wakefield to speak out, the pitcher had a point. Had he been ineffective as a closer a year earlier, the Red Sox might have left him in the rotation, and he just might have won his 14 or 15 games and pitched 200 innings. Instead, in helping the team, his individual performance as a starter suffered. The club moved him to the bullpen just before the beginning of the regular season, a decision that had Wakefield, if only for a brief time, wondering whether he should ask for a trade. The team's replacements for Wakefield in the starting rotation were grossly insufficient, and yet the Red Sox continued to use Wakefield out of the bullpen, in inconsequential situations, depriving both him and the team of valuable outs that might have helped them win more games.

In Wakefield's mind, none of it made any sense.

These guys don't know what they're doing.

Indeed, had it not been for Martinez, the Boston staff might have crumbled altogether. While Duquette had attempted to fortify the Boston offense by acquiring mercurial center fielder Carl Everett from the Houston Astros over the winter, a disproportionate number of innings in the starting rotation were falling on Martinez, who was performing at a level that would make him perhaps the single greatest player of his generation.

Like most everyone in Boston during those years, Wakefield found Martinez to be thoroughly entertaining and colorful, on the mound and off. Martinez had an infectious personality that permeated the Boston clubhouse, especially on the four days he did not pitch. He had the social impact of a class clown who was both loved by his mates and occasionally got on their nerves. Martinez's smarts, wit, and personality bridged the cultural gaps on the roster and endeared him to most everyone—he often referred to Wakefield as "Wakey"—and Wakefield felt that Martinez brought a blast of fresh air into a Boston market that sometimes needed to remember that baseball was a
game.
Martinez was
fun.
He was engaging. He said hello to anyone and everyone in and around Fenway Park, and Wakefield developed enormous respect for the way Martinez approached the game.

Off the field and on road trips, Martinez often kept to himself, but on the field he was the consummate teammate. Aside from possessing the desire to win, Martinez routinely retaliated for transgressions against Red Sox hitters, sometimes to a fault. In fact, his aggressiveness earned him, in some circles, a reputation as a head-hunter.

"Intense," Wakefield said of Martinez. "One of the best competitors I've ever seen."

In 1999 and 2000, too, Martinez put together arguably the two greatest back-to-back seasons of all time, winning consecutive American League Cy Young Awards (giving him three for his career) and performing at a level that was drawing comparisons to Sandy Koufax, among others. In those two seasons, Martinez went a combined 41–10 with a 1.90 ERA, a performance that only grew in magnitude when it was revealed that baseball was in the midst of an offensive era tainted
by rampant steroid use. During the 1999 and 2000 seasons, when the overall ERA in the American League was 4.88, Martinez's total was almost
three full runs per game
better than the league average; as a result, the average outcome of a game he pitched was something in the neighborhood of 5–2, which qualified as one-sided. Beyond that, during the same two-year span, the next-best pitcher behind Martinez in terms of ERA was Baltimore Orioles right-hander Mike Mussina, whose aggregate ERA was 3.65. In other words, Martinez was roughly
twice
as good as the next-best starter in the AL. The gap between Martinez and everyone else, in a manner of speaking, was about as big as the gap between Wakefield and Kerrigan.

Wakefield, like most everyone else, relished opportunities to watch Martinez pitch, and he appreciated Martinez's presence on the Boston staff as much as anyone else. Wakefield knew what an ace like Martinez meant to both him and the team. In Pittsburgh, the demands on Wakefield had grown unrealistic following the departure of Doug Drabek. The departure of Clemens had created a similar dynamic in Boston. As much as the arrival of a pitcher like Martinez gave Boston an ace who could beat any team at any time, it also established a clear hierarchy on the Boston staff that slotted pitchers according to their abilities and ensured that each pitcher only needed to do
his
job.

If his impact on the team meant that Martinez was pampered some during his time in Boston—and he was—Wakefield could accept that as a necessary side effect. He liked Pedro, though he did not particularly care for how some Sox personnel, particularly Kerrigan, catered to him. But Wakefield would have been more than willing to live with some spoiling of the ace pitcher had the Red Sox simply allowed him to do what he did best—pile up innings. The disconnect there between him and Kerrigan was causing him great frustration.

For whatever reason, or for many, the 2000 Sox never really melded. They missed the playoffs and finished with an 85–77 record despite the efforts of their inimitable ace. Everett's troubled soul surfaced by year's end, explaining why such a talented outfielder had been available by trade in the first place. An outspoken, volatile, and sometimes frightening man who could also be charming, Everett had a chip on his
shoulder the size of Fenway Park's famed left-field wall. Sometimes he would angrily rant and rave in the clubhouse, and at one point during the season he head-butted umpire Ron Kulpa. Everett made his teammates uneasy, and the tension he created ate at the fabric of the team, making it more difficult for players to succeed in a market where it was already nearly impossible.

Following the season, having reached the end of his three-year, $12 million contract with the team, Wakefield waited to hear whether the Sox would exercise their $5 million option for the 2001 season. When the team declined, he became a free agent for the first time in his career. He wondered whether Kerrigan was arguing against him again, just as the pitching coach had done during the 1999 playoffs. To that point, Wakefield had still resisted buying a home in the Boston area and putting down roots because he remained unsure about where his career and, more specifically, the knuckleball would take him. Despite all that had happened in Boston over the last two seasons, Wakefield told his agents that he still wanted to remain with the Red Sox. The Baltimore Orioles and Minnesota Twins had expressed some interest in signing him, but the pitcher instructed his agents to inform both teams that Boston was his priority. The Red Sox had given Wakefield a chance when few other teams did, united him with Niekro, rewarded him with contracts. His frustration over the last season or two did not change the fact that his time in Boston generally had been a good experience. He recognized what was important to him, and he had little desire to make decisions out of spite.

I can't preach about loyalty without showing it.

In December 2000, with Wakefield and the Red Sox facing a deadline, Wakefield agreed to a new two-year contract with the team for a guaranteed $6.5 million that included an option for the 2003 season. He was the property of the Red Sox again. In the rotation or out of the bullpen, he was going to pitch for Boston. Wakefield resented the way he was sometimes used—at one point he suggested that the Red Sox were "abusing" his versatility—but he also recognized that part of his value as a pitcher was that the team could ask him to do things that other pitchers could not. Again, Niekro's words guided him.
Knuckleball pitchers can start for you, they can be long men or middle men, and they can close.
Wakefield had done all of those things during his six seasons in Boston, and there was no other pitcher in the Boston organization—or for that matter, anywhere else—who could claim to have helped his team in as many ways.

That is something to be proud of.

For the Red Sox, the 2001 season would prove to be a relative disaster, though it could have been far worse had it not been for the efforts and versatility of their familiar knuckleballer and the addition of players like slugger Manny Ramirez, whom Duquette had signed to a club record eight-year, $160 million contract during the off-season. The Ramirez signing came after the Sox had lost out on their pursuit of pitcher Mussina, but it nonetheless qualified as the biggest free-agent acquisition in Red Sox history. Many assumed that the Red Sox were increasing their payroll to keep up with the Yankees—New York won the 2000 World Series, its third straight title and fourth in five years—but the Red Sox had other motivations, too. For one, unbeknownst to most, the club would soon be up for sale, and a player like Ramirez would dramatically increase the value of the franchise. For another, the Red Sox had an 80 percent ownership stake in the New England Sports Network (NESN), which broadcast their games, and NESN was about to become part of the basic package on cable outlets throughout New England. Adding Ramirez at that point in time would increase television ratings, which would increase ad revenues, which would increase profits.

For the first time in club history, the Red Sox payroll eclipsed $100 million, coming in during the summer of 2001 at $110 million, $30 million more than the Sox had spent a year earlier.

Duquette and owner John Harrington were now chiefly focused on the sale of the club, but unfortunate events on the field undermined part of their plan. Early in spring training, wonder-boy shortstop Garciaparra had recurring symptoms from a wrist injury he had suffered earlier in his career, an issue that ultimately required surgery and effectively wiped out his entire season. (He played in just 21 games.) Stalwart catcher Varitek broke his elbow while making a diving catch
during a game the Red Sox were winning easily in June, a mishap that ended the catcher's season as well. And on top of it all, the Sox effectively lost incomparable ace Martinez to a season-ending shoulder injury halfway through the season, the weight of the Boston staff having finally piled up on the team ace the way some had feared it would in the wake of two seasons during which the Red Sox got decidedly little from any other starter. Martinez's injury begged some questions:

Could Wakefield have made a difference?

Might he have helped preserve Pedro?

Along the way, Wakefield had merely continued to do his part, oscillating between the bullpen and the rotation with great efficiency. At midseason, he ranked among the American League leaders in ERA and had settled back into the rotation. And yet, with Martinez approaching a return from the disabled list in August, Wakefield learned he would be bounced from the rotation yet again, this time to accommodate Pedro. The move made no sense to him. He had pitched well all year. And so when Kerrigan informed him of the decision during a meeting in the players' lounge of the visiting clubhouse at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Wakefield uncharacteristically snapped, years of frustration pouring out in one damaging burst.