Knuckler (8 page)

By the spring of 1988 Martinez was seen as one of the best players in the country, but Tim Wakefield still was seen as a developing prospect, if for no other reason than the fact that he had matured later. For hitters especially, size and strength are important assets because the pitching gets more challenging at every level of development. The average velocity with which pitches are thrown increases dramatically at the professional levels. Off-speed pitches change direction far more acutely—and at higher speeds. The transition from aluminum bats (used in college) to wooden bats (used in professional play) is
another major adjustment. Players like Martinez were seen as virtual can't-miss prospects because they hit everything and anything from a young age—and for power—whereas someone like Wakefield was still regarded as something of a
project.

Nonetheless, Tim Wakefield knew he had a chance to be drafted.

In June 1988, following a junior season in which he hit 13 more homers and raised his career total to a school record 40—the record still stands—the Pittsburgh Pirates grabbed Wakefield in the eighth round of the draft with the 200th overall selection. (Martinez, by contrast, was the 14th overall player taken, in the first round, by the Seattle Mariners.) Wakefield was elated. He wanted to turn pro immediately. Steve and Judy Wakefield were similarly excited about the prospect of their son becoming a major leaguer—"You're always hopeful, but that's a big dream," Judy Wakefield said—and there was little doubt that Tim would sign relatively quickly. Hall, for one, remembered advising Wakefield throughout the process, but Florida Tech was hardly a baseball factory and the experience was new for all of them.

"I was at his house with his mom and his dad when he signed with the Pirates," Hall recalled. "I remember during the process [of negotiations], Tim turned to me and said, 'What do you think I should do?' I said, 'Tim, I don't know, but I'll tell you one thing: don't take the first offer.'"

With some minor haggling, Wakefield negotiated a deal with the Pirates that guaranteed him a signing bonus of just $15,000 and ensured that the Pittsburgh organization would pay for the balance of his schooling, if and when Wakefield returned to college. At the time, the Wakefields believed that was a good deal for an eighth-round selection, because it ensured their son some security in the event that his major league career did not work out. Wakefield himself, of course, was certain that signing with the Pirates would eventually produce a major league career, a typical expectation for a young man approaching his 22nd birthday. He had excelled everywhere he played. On the baseball diamond, he was as confident in his abilities as anyone. Wakefield never stopped to consider that he was one of thousands of minor league players who aspired to make it to the major leagues and
that the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against him. He never considered failure or even hardship.

During the summer of 1988, along with his parents, Tim Wakefield made the trip from Melbourne to Bradenton, across the flatness of the Florida peninsula, entirely unsure of what to expect. Baseball was an adventure now. He would be competing against dozens of other prospects and draft picks just like him. The Pirates had selected 66 players in the 1988 draft, and those who had signed quickly were asked to report to extended spring training at Pittsburgh's training facility along the Gulf Coast. As the newest members of the Pirates organization arrived, all of them with the hope of making it to the major leagues, Wakefield felt like a college freshman at BCC again, showing up for school amid a mountain of cardboard boxes, packing tape, and wild uncertainty.

How we got here doesn't matter. We're all the same now. Nobody is going to give me anything.

"Everybody was even. Everybody was good," Wakefield said. "It was a lot like the switch I made from high school to college. It was a huge adjustment."

In the grand scheme of any baseball career, extended spring training, in or around the time of the draft, qualifies as the major league equivalent of freshman orientation, or perhaps matriculation. The idea is to get everyone acclimated to a new environment, new life, new existence. The minor league structure subsequently allows teams to assign players to new locations immediately, and players are assigned according to their level of skill. Some begin at higher levels and some at lower levels, but all generally are faced with the same responsibilities. The idea is to show up every day, work hard, get better, and advance to the next level.

Truth be told, Tim Wakefield did not need long to learn that his hitting skills were short, that the power he demonstrated in college would not translate to the next level, that the journey would be difficult. As a starting point, the Pirates assigned Wakefield to their affiliate in the New York–Penn League at Watertown, New York, a transitional
league designed to help assimilate amateurs to a professional life. The New York–Penn League is the lowest level of minor league play—Class A—and it plays a
short
season of roughly 75 games. Because the season typically begins in June and runs through the summer, teams can immediately place those players from the annual June draft who signed quickly and showed the capability to play right away.

At Watertown, Wakefield's first career hit as a professional was a home run in a game during which he went 3-for-4, a performance that might have launched the career of one of the game's great hitters had it not been for the simple fact that, in Wakefield's words, "it was all downhill from there." Wakefield had trouble adjusting to the wooden bats—years later he would playfully explain his difficulties by telling people that he was "allergic to wood"—but the problem caused him quite a bit of consternation at the time. And living in New York felt much different to him than living near the campuses of BCC or Florida Tech. Compared with his transitions in college—to BCC and then to Florida Tech—Wakefield saw the start of his career as something far more real, more permanent, more intimidating.

This is my job now.

He remembered feeling alone when his parents drove him to Bradenton for extended spring—"They basically just dropped me off and left—and I don't mean that negatively," he said—and he felt even more isolated after being assigned to Watertown.

Nobody here knows me.

He was earning a mere $700 per month. Along with a pair of teammates whom he had just met, Wakefield rented a room in the house of an elderly woman for $50 a week. He rode a bike to and from the stadium. He remembered his parents being "horrified" at these arrangements when they first came to visit him, though Wakefield was too young and too inexperienced to know any better.

All in all, the start of Wakefield's professional career was hardly what he had envisioned, particularly when reality further intruded.

Shortly after arriving at Watertown, Wakefield learned of the death of his grandfather, Lester Wakefield, with whom he had shared an extremely close relationship. His grandfather had been battling can
cer, and Wakefield remembered being "devastated" by his death. He always had been able to confide in his grandfather, to speak to him, to share things with him. Hall was among those who described Lester Wakefield as "Tim's best friend," and with his death, Wakefield spent a good deal of his first official camp dwelling on what he had lost instead of the opportunity he had gained. He found it impossible to focus on baseball.

"It was really the first time I had to deal with something like that," Wakefield said of Lester's death. "He was somebody who came to all my games, and he took me fishing all the time. It was my first time away from home. I don't remember if it was my mom or my dad who called me with the news, but I flew to Virginia and met up with an aunt and uncle, who drove me home. Those two or three days were a complete fog. I was depressed. Having to leave early and go back to work was very difficult."

Along with baseball and fishing, Lester Wakefield shared something else with his grandson: music. Lester enjoyed playing the guitar, and he had spent some time trying to teach the skill to Tim before he died. The lessons never were completed. When Wakefield inherited the guitars his grandfather left behind, he committed himself to completing the teaching that his grandfather could not. And he did indeed teach himself to play the guitar, a skill he would never lose. Wakefield took a certain amount of gratification in that accomplishment, a sense of fulfillment from having applied some of the lessons his grandfather taught him, and not just with the guitar.

You have more talent than you think you do. You can adjust. You can still succeed.

Just the same, Wakefield's return to Watertown was a struggle: it was immediately evident that he would ultimately fail as a hitter, that the level of competition had exceeded his talent. In 54 games at Watertown, Wakefield went 30-for-159—a .189 average—with just nine extra-base hits. Pitchers overpowered him. He could not make good contact consistently. Even in Class A, pitchers threw much harder than they did in college, and the crispness of their breaking pitches did not compare.

Had Wakefield been able to hit some home runs despite a low bat
ting average, the Pirates might have seen value in his talents. There was always latitude for a power hitter—who might grow in plate discipline and contact—because, quite simply, power cannot be taught. Nevertheless, the early signs were beyond discouraging—and for obvious reasons. If Tim Wakefield could not hit the pitching at Watertown, he certainly would not be able to hit the pitching in Boston, Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles—not now, not ever. A few months at Watertown hardly qualified as a final verdict on Wakefield's abilities, but it was an indication that he had farther to travel than anyone might have guessed.

Wakefield returned home for the winter disappointed by his first professional season, and neither his performance nor his prognosis improved the following spring. He went back to Bradenton in February, when the Pirates began minor league camp, and he failed to make
any
of the club's affiliates out of spring training. He was caught in the netherworld between the lowest levels of minor league baseball and the highest level of amateur play, a no-man's-land that sends the large majority of aspiring professional baseball players off to lives filled with bar stools, beer taps, gas stations, mail rooms, public works, and office jobs. Wakefield was effectively relegated to the
practice squad
of professional baseball—Bradenton served as the "Land of Misfit Toys" for those struggling minor leaguers who were waiting for someone, somewhere, to suffer from an injury or extended failure.

For many of the players in extended spring training, the days could be a torturous exercise in frustration. There was the time before and after baseball, and then there was the time during. Wakefield was among those players who anxiously showed up at camp, put on their uniforms, and took the field not knowing how many more days they would be asked back. After the workouts, they got out of uniform and left with the same concerns. In between, Wakefield worked out and played in loosely structured games against players in other organizations living the same existence, the time they spent on the field often remaining as enjoyable as it had ever been. The baseball was fun. Baseball was the reason they were there. Baseball was why they lined up and tossed the ball back and forth to one another, throwing curveballs and screwballs
and, yes, knuckleballs, while wondering how much longer they would be asked to participate.

Daily, Tim Wakefield was among those who wondered.

He had little idea or understanding that the key to success was already in his possession, like the ability to play a guitar, and that it only needed to be unlocked, nurtured, and harvested.

They say you don't want to have a knuckleballer pitching for you or against you.

—Longtime Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda

B
ACK IN
M
ELBOURNE
, often at dusk, Steve Wakefield brought out the knuckleball with the intention of driving Tim Wakefield back into the house. But in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization during the late spring and summer of 1989, the knuckleball, as it turned out, was all that prevented Tim Wakefield from being sent home.

Wakefield was among the Pirates lined up on the field before an extended-spring game that year, playing catch with outfielder Jon Martin, who had been selected in the 10th round, two rounds after Wakefield, in the June 1988 draft. Like Wakefield, Martin had failed to make a team out of spring training. The scene was hardly anything out of the ordinary, just two struggling young players loosening up before a game scheduled to be played within a matter of hours. Wakefield tossed the occasional knuckleball to his teammate purely to alter the routine, to have a little fun, to laugh at his slightly younger teammate—Martin was 20, Wakefield 22—struggling to catch a pitch that darted about like a butterfly.

Unbeknownst to either of them, Woody Huyke was stealthily standing by, watching with more than amusement, his curiosity piqued. Huyke was then the manager of the Pirates team in extended spring
training, and he was still in the earlier stages of a career that would be spent almost exclusively in the player development operation of the Pittsburgh organization. Like Bill Lajoie, Huyke was open to most anything, but he knew the rules of player development, which included this one:
a guy with a good arm who plays a position and can't hit, you almost always try him as a pitcher before releasing him.
Tim Wakefield did not have the kind of arm strength that would have inspired such an experiment—his fastball, so to speak, was clocked at roughly 75 miles per hour during the prime of his career—but what he did possess was that knuckleball, the rarest of baseball offerings, and one that possessed potentially great value.

And so, as Tim Wakefield played what he thought was a relatively typical and uneventful game of catch with Jon Martin, and as sand trickled through the hourglass of his career, Woody Huyke cast the occasional glance their way and grew intrigued.