Knuckleballer Tim Wakefield is
expected to announce his retirement from Major League Baseball
later this afternoon. Wakefield pitched for
19 seasons, 17 of them with the Boston Red Sox. He finished his
big league career with exactly 200 wins.
Wakefield was drafted as an infielder by the Pittsburgh Pirates
back in 1988. However, it quickly became apparent that Wakefield
couldn’t hit a lick. Fortunately for Wakefield, he knew how to
throw a knuckleball and his career was saved. The Pirates called up
Wakefield to the bigs late in the 1992 season and he was an
immediate sensation. Wakefield threw a
complete game against the St. Louis Cardinals striking out ten
batters in his MLB debut. He went on to post a 8-1 record with a
2.15 ERA. Despite making only 13 starts, he finished third in the
NL Rookie of the Year balloting behind Eric Karros of the Los
Angeles Dodgers and Moises Alou of the Montreal Expos. Wakefield
then won two games in the NLCS against the Atlanta Braves but it
wasn’t enough to overcome Sid Bream’s
mad dash to home and the Pirates have not had a winning season
since.
The following season, Wakefield struggled with a 6-11 record and
a staggering ERA of 5.61 ERA and would spend all of 1994 in the
minor leagues before being released by the Bucs early in 1995. A
short time later, the Red Sox took a chance on Wakefield and the
magic returned. With Roger Clemens injured much of the season,
Wakefield became the ace of the staff winning 16 games including a
14-1 start en route to the Red Sox first AL East pennant in five
years.
Wakefield would remain in a Red Sox uniform through 16 more
seasons which given the volatility of the knuckleball had more than
their share of ups and downs. Between 1999 and 2002, Wakefield
worked predominantly out of the bullpen due to injuries to other
pitchers and the lack of available arms. Sometimes this kept him in
games in which another pitcher might have been ordinarily removed.
But because of his durability, he often took one for the team and
his stats suffered because of it. Had Wakefield been used
exclusively as a starter he probably would finisher with close to
250 wins.
In 2003, Red Sox manager Grady Little returned Wakefield to the
starting rotation and was the team’s most effective pitcher during
that post-season against the New York Yankees. Unfortunately,
Wakefield gave up a walk off homerun to Aaron “Freakin’” Boone in
the bottom of the 11th inning of Game 7 of the ALCS. If not for
that pitch, Wakefield might very well have been the ALCS MVP.
But Wakefield stayed around to earn World Series rings with the
Red Sox in 2004 and 2007 and made his only AL All-Star Team in
2009. He also became known for his charitable endeavors and in 2010
was bestowed with the prestigious Roberto
Clemente Award. In 2011, Wakefield
won his 200th big league game. It took him eight attempts to do
so however and as it turned out his 200th win would be his last.
Wakefield had hoped to pitch in 2012 because he needed only seven
more wins to pass Cy Young and Roger Clemens to become the
winningest pitcher in Red Sox history. Cy Young and The Rocket each
tallied 192 wins for the Bosox.
Unfortunately, in the midst of the Red Sox collapse last
September, Wakefield
took some heat for saying the fans deserved to watch him try to
break the record. Under any other circumstances those comments
probably wouldn’t have raised many eyebrows and had the Red
Sox made the post-season he probably would have been brought back
for 2012. But the Sox didn’t make the post-season and when the
finger pointing began Sox fans criticized Wakefield (unfairly)
for putting himself ahead of the team. Given all the changes
that have taken place in the off season, it was clear that the Red
Sox were not going to offer Wakefield a contract and Wakefield did
not want to pitch in any other big league uniform.
It’s too bad that Wakefield could not have retired under happier
circumstances but when you consider that his baseball career nearly
ended almost as soon as it started he got to spend nearly 20 years
playing Major League Baseball. As Ronald Reagan put it, “All in
all, not bad. Not bad at all.”
I recommend Tony Massarotti’s biography of Wakefield,
Knuckler which was released in 2011.
