Knuckler (31 page)

The Yankees, too, knew of Schilling's importance, his arrival in Boston having elicited a response from the most respected Yankees that revealed more than a hint of concern.

"They've made some good additions," Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter had said during spring training. "They've added some quality guys, and the big one is Schilling. Obviously, you win with pitching and defense, and they've added a quality guy."

With all the hype that had accompanied meetings between the Red Sox and Yankees for several months, Game 1 of the American League Championship Series took on enormous proportions, particularly for New York. Despite being the defending American League champions and the reigning AL East Division champion in possession of home-field advantage, the Yankees entered the series as improbable underdogs. Incredibly, the Las Vegas oddsmakers had installed the Red Sox as favorites. Wakefield and his mates shrugged this off as nothing more than media hype and said all the right things publicly, but privately they couldn't help but see it as further evidence of their inevitable success.
Everyone else knows what we know. We're the better team. Now we just have to go and prove it.
Confidence in the Red Sox had never been higher, in and out of the Boston clubhouse.

And then, with little warning, the Red Sox found themselves reeling.

From the start, Wakefield was among those who could see that Schilling was laboring.
He doesn't look right.
Pitching on an ankle that he had recently tweaked—or so everyone thought—Schilling was battered in Game 1, allowing two runs in the first inning and four more in the third. He never came out of the dugout to pitch the fourth.
Boston's series game plan was immediately thrown into a state of chaos as Francona found himself forced to use six relievers, including Wakefield, for no more than an inning each. Yankees starter Mike Mussina—an unsung hero of Game 7 in 2003—flirted with a perfect game as the Yankees built an 8–0 lead through six innings, at which point the Red Sox began a near-historic comeback that whittled the score to 8–7. The Yankees ultimately won, 10–7, but the nature of the game made a handful of things clear from the outset.

Whenever the Red Sox and Yankees were involved, there was no way of predicting anything.

Favorites or no favorites, all bets were off.

With or without Schilling, Wakefield felt that the Red Sox still had the pitching to defeat the Yankees. Depending on the severity of his injury, Schilling's absence would certainly be costly, but the Red Sox still had great depth. Not many teams had someone like Martinez lined up to pitch Game 1, let alone Game 2. Fewer teams still had someone like Lowe, who had been a postseason hero only a year earlier, in the bullpen. The 2004 Red Sox were a carefree lot—loud and entertaining—but they were also confident more than they were cocky. There was an unspoken trust between them. Wakefield did not have to say anything to Martinez following Game 1—or vice versa—because everyone
knew
the reality. In a pitching rotation, as in the bullpen in some respects, the baton passed from one man to the next, albeit from game to game. There was a certain camaraderie among starters, who were another team within the team intent on helping one another. If one failed, the next one covered for him, and so on. Pedro Martinez had been around long enough to understand what he needed to do.

But once again, the Red Sox failed to hit until it was too late. While Martinez pitched quite well, Jon Lieber was brilliant, and the Boston lineup was shut down by a Yankees starter for a second consecutive night. New York built a 2–0 series lead as the ALCS shifted back to Boston, and the Red Sox suddenly found themselves in what seemed to be a virtual must-win situation. Francona entrusted Game 3 to slinky right-hander Bronson Arroyo, but he, like Schilling, was treated like a punching bag by the Yankee batters. Though the Red Sox offense had
awakened to force a 6–6 tie entering the fourth inning, the Red Sox simply had no answers for the New York lineup. Francona desperately tried to clean up the developing mess by going through relievers as if they were paper towels, but the game was rapidly getting out of control and threatening to destroy Boston's season.

Because rain had postponed Game 3 by a day, the clubs lost a scheduled travel day between Games 5 and 6 of the series, a loss that was now affecting the Red Sox far more than the Yankees. If the Red Sox were to win the series—somehow, some way—they would have to play the final five games without a day off, putting even more strain on a bullpen that had endured a season's worth of wear and tear. Consequently, Francona found himself in the unenviable position of both losing Game 3
and
burning his bullpen for the balance of the series, however long that would be, a combination that would have left Boston with even less of a chance to win a best-of-seven set in which they were already being thoroughly embarrassed.

Like Martinez entering Game 2, Wakefield assessed the situation without any prodding.
We're getting killed. And if we're going to have a chance from here on out, we have to save the bullpen.
The knuckleballer got up from his seat in the dugout and walked over to his manager, asking the obvious question.
Do you need my arm tonight?
Francona needed the innings, to be sure, but he also needed a starter for Game 4. If Lowe was prepared to start the following night, the manager said, Wakefield would be used. Wakefield turned, walked over to Lowe, and asked the demoted starter whether he could start the next game, and Lowe nodded yes. Wakefield grabbed his glove and ran down to the bullpen between innings to warm up, all with the idea of preserving the late-inning relievers for a future game the Red Sox might actually be able to win.

To that extent, without question, Wakefield's outing proved an enormous success. Though Embree appeared in the game in the eighth inning—by which point the Yankees had built a 17–8 lead—he threw just 14 pitches. Timlin and Foulke did not appear in the game at all. With the exception of Wakefield, who pitched 3⅓ innings (10 outs) and threw 64 pitches in
relief,
no Sox reliever to that point had been ex
posed to the carnage for more than an inning or 20 pitches, a method Francona had similarly employed in Game 1. By distributing the workload and asking every full-time reliever to do
a little,
Francona had avoided overburdening any of them, ensuring that he would have as many weapons as possible at his disposal for subsequent games.

And yet, for that same plan to work in a Game 3 loss that produced a humiliating, lopsided score of 19–8 and all but knocked the Red Sox out cold, the manager needed his knuckleballer to take a bullet and sacrifice his Game 4 start in service to a long-term approach that Wakefield had long since learned from Jim Leyland and Kevin Kennedy and Jimy Williams and Grady Little.

Taking a loss today might help produce wins during the rest of the week.

Of course, the Red Sox were focused on taking one step at a time, something they hoped to begin doing in Game 4. They had no more margin for error. They trailed in the series 3–0. One more loss would end their season. Making his first start since the regular season, Lowe effectively neutralized a cresting Yankees offense that had battered both Schilling in Game 1 and Arroyo in Game 3, giving the Red Sox, for just the second time in the series, a
chance
at victory entering the late innings. Wakefield saw this as a good sign.
Derek did his part.
Though facing a 4–3 deficit against the inimitable Rivera entering the ninth inning, the Red Sox rallied to tie the game on a walk by Kevin Millar, a stolen base by pinch runner Dave Roberts, and a game-tying single by Bill Mueller. Just like that, the Red Sox came back to life.

Wakefield, for one, saw it fitting that the rally began with Millar, whose arrival in Boston had dramatically transformed the makeup of the Boston clubhouse. Millar had defied all the odds to build a successful major league career after being discovered in the low-budget independent leagues, and he had what Wakefield playfully described as a "strong personality." Millar was loud and defiant, and he brought a mentality to Boston that had been sorely lacking at Fenway Park for decades. Every day Millar would walk around the Red Sox clubhouse and needle someone like Manny Ramirez or David Ortiz as easily as he would Wakefield or Bill Mueller, bridging the sort of cultural and comm
unication gaps that were common in many clubhouses throughout baseball.

He's our glue.

With Red Sox relievers pitching a sterling 6⅔ innings during which they allowed just one run in relief of Lowe, Boston won Game 4 in dramatic fashion, the outcome decided on a two-run, game-winning home run by David Ortiz that produced a 6–4 victory in the bottom of the 12th inning. Just as Wakefield had done a year earlier in Game 7, Yankees reliever Paul Quantrill, a onetime member of the Red Sox, walked off the mound in dejected fashion as the home team celebrated. The Red Sox repeated the scene the following night when Ortiz punched a game-winning single to center against right-hander Esteban Loaiza to give Boston a 5–4 win in 14 innings that whittled New York's series advantage to 3–2, and it was in that victory that Wakefield made his second and most significant contribution in what became an epic series.

Because Game 4 lasted 12 innings, despite Lowe's solid performance, Francona again had relied heavily on his bullpen. His relievers continued to carry an undue portion of the workload. Thanks to a radical procedure performed on Schilling's ankle by team medical staff, the Red Sox believed they could have Schilling back for Game 6 in New York, assuming the team could extend the series that far. To do so, Boston would need a strong performance in Game 5 from Martinez, who pitched his team into the seventh.

Much to the chagrin of his manager, Martinez's contribution of six innings would prove to be less than half the game.

Trailing 4–2 in the eighth, the Red Sox again rallied to even the score, the tying run scoring in eerily similar fashion to Game 4. After Ortiz opened the eighth with a homer against reliever Tom Gordon—another former member of the Red Sox—Millar again walked. Pinch runner Roberts advanced to third on a single by Nixon before scoring on a sacrifice fly by Jason Varitek, whom Rivera had been brought into the game to face. The Red Sox and Yankees then ventured into extra innings again, the drama building through an array of missed scoring opportunities in the ninth, 10th, and 11th innings.

Francona had already used Timlin, Embree, Foulke, Mike Myers, and Game 3 starter Arroyo, so once again he summoned Wakefield, his human spackling compound.
I need to fill the gaps again.
The image of Wakefield trotting onto the field in extra innings of an elimination game evoked immediate and obvious images of Game 7 in 2003, but Wakefield never allowed the thought of Aaron Boone to enter his mind. With a man in scoring position in the 12th, Wakefield retired both Jeter and Rodriguez on flyouts. The Red Sox failed to score in the bottom of the inning, setting the stage for a freakish 13th inning that served up evidence that the luck of the Red Sox and their loyal knuckleballer had changed for the better.

Paired with Varitek, who had not caught him all season, Wakefield began the inning by striking out Gary Sheffield. But Sheffield reached first base because Varitek couldn't hold on to the third strike. Yankees outfielder Hideki Matsui then forced Sheffield at second base for the first out of the inning, and Wakefield seemed on the verge of escaping without any damage when Bernie Williams was retired on a flyout to right field.

And then, as if trying to avoid capture, Wakefield's magic knuckler began darting about as if it were a schizophrenic butterfly.

With two outs and Matsui still at first, Wakefield threw a knuckler that averted Varitek's grasp and advanced Matsui to scoring position.
Another passed ball.
When Wakefield missed the strike zone with a subsequent pitch that moved the count further in favor of the batter, Jorge Posada, Francona ordered an intentional walk.
There were now runners at first and second.
The count on designated hitter Ruben Sierra was in Wakefield's favor, 1–2, when the knuckler escaped Varitek yet again, a third passed ball that advanced the runners to second and third bases and brought Fenway Park to a virtual state of panic.
Can Tek even catch this thing?
The count had run full, 3–2, and as Matsui aggressively crept in from third, Posada moved from second, and the home crowd held its breath, Wakefield rocked into his delivery.

The pitch, of course, was a knuckleball, possessing every bit as much movement as Wakefield's other pitches in the inning. Had Sierra been batting right-handed, as many switch-hitters opted to do against
Wakefield, the ball would have darted in and landed near his right foot. Sierra had chosen to bat from the left side, however, and so, when he began his swing, the pitch looked as big as a beach ball, but when he came around the ball had suddenly darted down and away from the man who might have sent the New York Yankees back to the World Series for a second consecutive season and the seventh time in nine years.

As Sierra swung and missed, Jason Varitek, like part of a tandem doing everything possible to win an egg toss, desperately and awkwardly sprawled to his knees and caught the knuckler, the ball disappearing into his glove for a safe, secure strike three.

Inning over.

Disaster avoided.

Comeback intact.

Whew.

An inning later, after Wakefield retired the Yankees in order in the top of the 14th, Ortiz delivered his second game-winning hit in as many nights. The Red Sox and Yankees packed their belongings and headed to New York for Game 6, Tim Wakefield having earned the honor as the winning pitcher in Game 5 after sparing Red Sox relievers in Game 3.

"Last year is last year," Wakefield succinctly told reporters after the game.

The message was obvious.

That's history.

Now we have to make some of our own.

In fact, even as Varitek was wearing out a path to and from the backstop, Wakefield never lost confidence in his new batterymate, their relationship having been forged through their years together in the Boston organization. Varitek, like Wakefield, had come to the Red Sox from elsewhere, acquired in a 1997 trade that brought him along with Derek Lowe to Boston from the Seattle Mariners. Wakefield had pitched to him extensively in the late 1990s. Wakefield, Lowe, and Varitek were now among a group of Red Sox personnel who had been in Boston longer than many other Sox employees, a list that included the owner,
general manager, manager, and many teammates. Wakefield
trusted
Varitek. He believed in him. And even as Varitek struggled to harness Wakefield's knuckler at its dancing best, the two repeatedly made eye contact, mutually reassuring each other that they remained unshaken.