Knuckler (38 page)

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 seventh, 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.

And this time to no one who would appreciate it more than Tim Wakefield.

Tim Wakefield had 164 career victories for the Red Sox when he reported to spring training in 2009, and so the math was simple. Wakefield needed 29 wins to overtake Cy Young and Roger Clemens atop the team's all-time list for wins, a number that would require at least two seasons of production, more than likely three. Over the previous three years, Wakefield had averaged 11 wins a year. At that same pace, he would be able to break the club record in 2011.

That would also be the season in which Wakefield would celebrate his 45th birthday, the age Phil Niekro had suggested from the very beginning was within the realm of possibility.

That would be perfect.

Much to Wakefield's delight, the season began in a fashion that exceeded even his own plans and expectations. After a solid season debut in which he suffered a loss but allowed three runs in six innings—the definition, by major league standards, of a
quality start
—Wakefield went 4–0 with one no-decision in his next five outings (all Red Sox wins). He then lost one, won two, lost two, won four. By the time July dawned, Wakefield was 10–3 with a 4.18 ERA and the Red Sox were a sensational 12–3 in his 15 starts, the kind of bottom-line performance that every pitcher covets. Wakefield always had believed that his primary responsibility to the Red Sox was to make his starts and to "suck up" innings—to collect those precious outs—and that the rest would take care of itself. If he did his job, the team would win the majority of his starts. He would get his share of wins. The victories were a by-product of effort, not the other way around, and so Wakefield tried not to put too much emphasis on the individual victories.

And yet, in the real world, Wakefield knew that perception was everything. When people talked of pitchers from the past, they talked about things like
20-win seasons
and careers in which pitchers
won 300 games.
The bottom line was deceiving, to be sure, but the bottom line was often what people focused on.

Much to his surprise, as the Red Sox neared the conclusion of the first half of the season, Wakefield found himself being discussed as a candidate for the All-Star Game, an honor he had never achieved during his career. For that reason, it meant something to him. Wakefield and his wife, Stacy, had planned to spend the All-Star break vacationing with their two children—Trevor, then five, and four-year-old Brianna—a customary respite that he, like most players, longed for amid the relentlessness of the major league schedule. The All-Star break was a time to get away. And yet, as people spoke about his potential candidacy for the All-Star Game—some argued that Wakefield might even be considered to
start
the game, an enormous honor—Wakefield found himself hoping that he would be selected and in fact wondering why it had never happened before. He felt that it was an honor he had certainly earned.

On the day Major League Baseball announced the rosters for the
All-Star Game in St. Louis in a made-for-television selection show aired about 10 days before the game, Wakefield went about his standard pregame business in the weight room at Fenway Park. Starting positional players are
elected
to All-Star rosters through fan balloting, but backups and pitchers are
selected
through a more intricate process that involves player balloting and managerial decisions. Sometimes the choices fell exclusively to the All-Star team manager to make, as Terry Francona had twice experienced. The presence of the Red Sox in the World Series in 2004 and 2007 had earned Francona the right to manage the All-Star team in each of the following seasons, a role that was both an honor and a responsibility. Frequently it was a no-win situation as well.

Politics and restrictions also played a big part in the election process—officials from Major League Baseball could get into the act and "advise" the manager on his selections—and all these factors frequently combined to prevent the best players from being honored.

Wakefield knew all of this, and he knew, too, that the knuckleball worked against him. Without the knuckleball, he was already one of those players deemed to be "on the bubble." Wakefield's best chance seemed to be through the intervention of American League manager Joe Maddon, the Tampa Bay skipper who might use one of his manager's picks on the knuckleballer. But in choosing Wakefield, Maddon might leave himself open to criticism and second-guessing by fans and officials in the numerous markets that had an equally worthy pitcher who was, well,
not
a knuckleballer.

And so, as Wakefield went through his pregame routine, he was unsure of what to expect when pitching coach John Farrell entered the weight room and told Wakefield that he was wanted in Francona's office "after he talked to the other guys." Wakefield was unsure what that meant.
Other guys? What other guys? And about what?
Wakefield nodded to his pitching coach, his mind searching for the possible cause of a trip to the manager's office.
What could this possibly be about?
The All-Star Game never crossed his mind as Wakefield walked toward Francona's office. The door was closed as Wakefield approached—a sign that he would have to wait, that the manager was in the middle of
other business and needed privacy. When the door finally opened, a group of Red Sox players that included first baseman Kevin Youkilis, second baseman Dustin Pedroia, outfielder Jason Bay, closer Jonathan Papelbon, and Beckett emerged from a meeting with the manager, all toting informational packets distributed by their manager that highlighted their responsibilities at the All-Star Game. Unsure if he was going or not, Wakefield didn't know what to make of this group, though he was developing a pit in his stomach.