Born in Melbourne, Florida on August 2, 1966, Timothy Stephen Wakefield attended public school, graduating from Eau Gallie High School in Melbourne.
At an early age, around 7 or 8, Tim was taught knuckleball by his father Steve. His father was an active softball player who worked the morning shift 3A.M to 11A.M., at the Harris Corporation, an electronics company, and he designed circuits. Tim’s mother Judy Wakefield, also worked for Harris as a purchaser and a professional assistant. Tim’s parents also had another child, Tim’s sister Kelly.
Tim and his
father would play catch for hours together.
After a while, Tim’s father decided to start throwing knuckleballs at
him, to finally get Tim to go inside and take a break from playing catch. Eventually, Tim gave in and said, “Ok, I’ve
had enough.” In doing this, Tim learned
early that the knuckleball could be not only difficult to catch, but hit as
well. Tim admitted later that he saw it
as a magic trick or party stunt, not a serious pitching tool.
He played
T-ball and Little League, and growing up in Florida, he was able to play
baseball every day. His favorite team
and player growing up was the Atlanta Braves and Outfielder, First Baseman, and
Catcher, Dale Murphy. He won a baseball
scholarship to Brevard Community College, but the other players were so good
that he quit the team before he ever got to play a game. Not all was lost, the head coach of the
Florida Institute of Technology saw his potential and recruited him. Tim played first base for Florida Tech and
did quite well. He hit 22 home runs in
one season, and in June 1988 was selected by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the
eighth round of the draft. He signed for
a bonus of $15,000 and the commitment from the Pirates to pay for the remainder
of his college tuition when he went back to school.
The Pirates
then placed Wakefield on their Watertown (New York) affiliate in the New
York-Penn League. Where he played first
base, appearing in 54 games. Despite
appearing 192 times at the plate, he only managed to scrape out a .189 batting
average with 3 home runs and 20 RBIs, and striking out 57 times. Being overmatched, he still had the
discipline to draw 25 walks, bumping his on-base percentage to .328.
In 1989, he
played on two different teams – a few with the Augusta Pirates in the South
Atlantic League, a Class A team, and the Welland (Ontario) Pirates back in the
NYPL. Woody Huyke, his manager in
extended spring training, saw him fooling around with the knuckleball while
playing catch with one of his teammates and saw how difficult it was to
catch. At Welland, Wakefield was told to
use the knuckleball, and he split his time between the infield and pitching (in
18 games). He won and lost one recorded
a 3.40 ERA, and went to the Instructional League in the Fall. Knowing he wasn’t going to make it as a
hitter, he realized developing the unusual pitch just might be his only road –
not knowing if it was going to work – to make it to the big leagues. Even though Wakefield wasn’t thrilled, he
said “When they put an infielder on the mound, it’s most likely they’re putting
you out to pasture. They’re saying you
don’t have what it takes to get to the big leagues.”
In his first
season, 1990 he played exclusively as a pitcher, having an ERA of 4.73, and his
record for last-place Salem (Virginia) Buccaneers was 10-14 (they had the worst
record in the Carolina League.) The
Pirates moved him up to Double-A ball in 1991, pitching in Raleigh for the
Carolina Mudcats in the Southern League.
There he had a very good year with a 15-8 season, a 2.90 ERA in 25
starts. He pitched one game for Triple-A
Buffalo and lost.
Halfway
through the 1992 season, he was called up to the major leagues. He’d been 10-3 (3.06) with Buffalo. The Pirates were truly in need of good
pitching.
On July 31,
1992, manager Jim Leyland put Wakefield on the mound for his major league
debut. Getting a complete-game win at
Three Rivers Stadium against the visiting St. Louis Cardinals, the Pirates
couldn’t have hoped for a better start.
Only allowing six hits, and walking five, he struck out 10/ Although allowing two runs, neither of them
were earned. The final was 3-2 Pirates
over the Cardinals. He told reporters,
“Really, I wasn’t nervous except for the first pitch,” “I just stepped off the
mound and looked around and saw Andy Van Slyke in center and Barry Bonds in
left and Chico Lind at second…that always makes a pitcher feel better.”
His next
three starts were superb, as well. Over
his first four starts, he only allowed five earned runs and he was 3-0 with a
1.32 ERA. He lost one, 6-5 to the Giants
in San Francisco, but didn’t give up more than three runs a game for the rest
of the season, finishing 8-1 with a 2.15 ERA.
In 92 innings, he’d only given up 76 base hits. Knuckleballers are rare. When he was matched up against Dodgers
pitcher Tom Candiotti on August 26, it was the first time National League
knuckleball pitchers had met since September 13. 1982 (when Phil Niekro
faced his brother Joe). Wakefield threw
a six-hit, 2-0 shutout.
Despite such
a late start in the season, he came in third in Rookie of the Year voting –
which was done before the postseason, in which Wakefield continued to
shine. The Pirates made it to the
National League Championship Series (NLCS) and Pirates GM Ted Simmons said his
rotation was going to be “Doug Drabek, Danny Jackson, and the
Miracle. That’s what Timmy has been for
us since he came up.” Wakefield had 2
decisions, both complete-game wins, in Game Three (3-2) and Six (13-4). Unfortunately, the Braves beat the Pirates in
Game Seven. Wakefield’s postseason ERA
was 3.00.
The 1993
season was a disappointing one after such a magical first season. Wakefield was given the honor of being the
Opening Day pitcher, and won the game, but walked nine batters. He went 6-11 with a 5.61 ERA with the
Pirates, “a model of inconsistency – looking sharp in one outing and struggling
in the next.”
That
inconsistency reflected the unpredictability of the pitch that he threw. A couple years later, Wakefield said, “I have
no idea where it’s going, the hitter doesn’t know where it’s going, and the
catcher doesn’t know where it’s going. I
just try to throw it down the middle of the plate.” Finally, it came to the point that Wakefield
was demoted two levels midseason, to Raleigh and the Double-A Mudcats for a
couple of months. He put a good face on,
choosing to look at it as something akin to a “rehabilitation assignment.” Even in Double-A, however, he was 3-5 with a
6.99 ERA.
Working his way back to Triple-A Buffalo in 1994 for the full year, he still
struggled. His ERA was 5.84 with a 5-15
record. It was mystifying at the time,
but considering his performance simply reflected the most unpredictable two
pitches: one really never knew when it would be “on” or “off.” Phil Niekro, the masterful knuckleball
pitcher who made it to Cooperstown (Baseball Hall of Fame), said, “Tim was so
successful early, and then he just lost it.
That’s when it becomes tough mentally to throw a pitch everybody knows is
coming. I’ve told him that he’s got to
keep learning, he got to eat, sleep, walk, and talk the knuckleball until it
floats in his bloodstream like a spirit inside him.”
He also
benefited from advice from other members of the knuckleball fraternity,
including Charlie Hough and Candiotti, who taught him how to change
speeds, pick spots with hitters, and be patient when it didn’t work. Wakefield “paid it forward” to knuckleballers
who came after him, notably R.A. Dickey.
April 20,
1995, just as the major-league season was about to begin (after the players’
strike had prematurely ended in 1994), the Pirates released Wakefield. Not even a week later, the Boston Red Sox
took a flyer and signed to a Triple-A contract.
Red Sox GM Dan Duquette had seen Wakefield pitch when Duquette was GM
for the Montreal Expos. He had a
pitching staff in Boston that need a breath of fresh air. Duquette’s appeal to Wakefield was based in
part on an arrangement to hire Phil Niekro as a consultant and offer to set the
young pitcher up with him. Wakefield
said, “Boston was the only team to make me a decent offer.”
He was
called up in time to pitch on May 27, making back-to-back starts on May 27 and,
on two days’ rest, May 30. Wakefield had
one of his best years with the Red Sox in 1995. He finished the season with a 2.98 ERA, winning his first four starts –
two of them complete games, allowing just two earned runs over 34 innings. He just kept on winning – even taking a
no-hitter into the eighth inning twice, on June 9th and July 9th
– until the point he was 14-1 (1.65) in mid-August.
But the
knuckleball teaches humility, he was 2-7 over the rest of the season, losing
the last four games he started. Even
with the ups and downs, The Wall Street Journal wrote in late September
that Wakefield was having “one of the best knuckleball seasons of all
time.” Boston finished first in the AL
East but were swept in the Division Series by the Cleveland Indians. Wakefield lost Game Three, 8-2. His key contribution to getting the team to
the postseason was recognized; he placed third in voting for the Cy Young
Award. He had been 16-8 (2.95), leading
the team in victories.
There were a
couple of years that were so-so. In the 1996 season, he only went 14-13 (5.14), he then went to arbitration over salary
differences with the Red Sox, and Wakefield prevailed. In 1997, a swollen elbow
put him on the 15-day disabled list in April, he went 12-15, despite improving
his ERA to 4.25. His 15 losses were the
worst in the American League (AL).
Having a
great team around any pitcher is a big deal.
During the 1998 postseason, the Red Sox once again reached the
postseason, and Wakefield’s ERA was 4.58, but his win-loss record was 17-8. Boston faced the Indians again in the
Division Series. This time, Wakefield
pitched in Game Two. He was bombed for
five runs, lasting only 1 1/3 innings, and took the loss.
During the
1999 season, closer Tom Gordon was injured, so the Red Sox used Wakefield as a
swingman, where he would start in stretches and relieved in others. As a closer, he saved 15 games in 18
opportunities. On August 10, he tied a
major-league record by striking out four batters in one inning (the 10th);
unfortunately blowing a save in the game.
A big lesson
he learned he said was, “Don’t pitch to the names.” In other words, don’t worry about the
strengths or weaknesses of the batter in the box. Get the ball over the plate, and let the
knuckleball’s flutter perform its magic.
Learning from Phil Niekro taught him that throwing the knuckleball did
require a degree of psychological fortitude, along with maintaining
self-confidence and faith. Since no
batter knew that the ball was going to flutter, use that to your
advantage.” Teammate Mike Greenwell
noticed that when Wakefield was pressing himself, that he was throwing the ball
too hard. Greenwell told him, “Ease up a
little. Don’t put so much pressure on
yourself. You’re trying too hard…Try
taking a little off.”
When the
1999 postseason rolled around, yet again the Red Sox made it in. Wakefield pitched in two games in the
Division Series, for a total of two innings, and giving up three earned runs.
When the
2000 season came around, Wakefield wasn’t pleased about being assigned to the
bullpen, almost at the last minute.
“It’s hard to swallow two days before the season starts and all the work
I’ve put in. I don’t see any reasoning
for it.” In some key respects,
Wakefield’s record in 2000 (6-10, 5.48) was almost a carbon copy of the 1999
season (6-11, 5.08). In 2000, however,
Derek Lowe became the full-time closer for Boston, and Wakefield received only
one save opportunity and failed to convert it.
In 2001, Wakefield
started 17 games for the third straight year.
He brought his ERA down to 3.90, with a record of 9-12. He watched several managers come and go in
Boston, and it felt that Jimy Williams was made a scapegoat for the
dysfunctional clubhouse. Joe Kerrigan
who was the pitching coach, replaced Williams, and it was a short-term move
that saw the club get worse.
Wakefield
published an autobiography in 2011, and it is an exceptionally honest one,
admitting to uncertainty and vulnerability.
Boston took advantage of his versatility, at times a bit too much. Ballplayers tend to benefit from routines and with regard to the certainty of their role.
He went through various changes, managers, and roles, and even when the
Henry/Werner/Lucchino group purchased the club in 2002. In some ways, he felt, “My whole career has
been in a state of flux.”
In 2002,
Grady Little, the new manager told him that his season would be starting in the
bullpen, Wakefield said, “I’m not upset about it, I accept it.” “That’s the way things are around here.” When it came down to brass tacks though, his
first two appearances were starts. By
the end of the season, he started 15 games relieved in 30 others, and saved
three in five chances. Despite the three
different roles, his ERA in 2002 was 2.81 and he boasted an 11-5 record. The mixed roles during the 1999-2002 seasons
may have cost him 20 or more wins, which would have secured his standing as
with winningest pitcher in Red Sox history.
In November
of 2002, he married Stacy Stover, whom he met in Massachusetts. They have two children, Trevor and
Brianna. Stacy worked with Wakefield’s
Warriors, a group associated with the Franciscan Hospital for Children in
Boston which gave children the opportunity to come to Fenway Park, watch
batting practice and meet some of the players.
In the 2003
season, Wakefield returned to starting, almost exclusively. With rare exceptions and a bump in 2010, he
remained a starter for the remainder of his career. He never achieved better than his 4.09 ERA in
2003 over those final years. He went
11-7 during the 2003 regular season, nine of those wins coming while starting.
After a three-year
gap, the Red Sox got back to the postseason in 2003. Wakefield started and lost Game One of the
Division Series, but blossomed in the American League Championship Series
(ALCS) against the Yankees. Winning Game
One, 5-2, working six innings as the starter, and also started and won Game
Four, 3-2, giving up just one run in six innings.
Game Seven
took place three days later, pitting Pedro Martinez (Boston) against Roger
Clemens (Yankees). After eight innings,
the score was tied 5-5, and Mike Timlin got the Yankees 1-2-3 in the bottom of
the ninth. Boston’s manager (Little)
called on Wakefield to pitch the bottom of the 10th and he got them
1-2-3. In the bottom of the 11th,
one pitch Wakefield threw, he wished he could take back. Third baseman Aaron Boone hit a game-winning
home run which sent the Yankees to the World Series and sent Boston home for
the winter. “It wasn’t supposed to end
like this,” Wakefield said. “It’s
difficult, period. We are brothers in
here. We have been family going on nine
months and it hurts.”
Alluding to
the team’s stunning loss in Game Six of the 1986 World Series, Wakefield also
told Red Sox clubby Joe Cochran, “I just became Bill Buckner.” Though he apologized to the Red Sox fans
afterward, no one blamed or thought poorly of Wakefield. At the Boston Baseball Writers dinner over
the winter, Wakefield received a standing ovation from the thousand or more
fans in attendance.
This was –
almost – the nadir for Boston in the long rivalry between the Red Sox and the
Yankees, right up there with the “Bucky Dent” single-game playoff loss for the
AL East title in 1978. Here it was 25
years later, and the Sox had still never beaten the Yankees in a high-stakes
matchup.
The true
nadir came a year later in the 2004 League Championship Series, after the
Yankees took the first three games trouncing Boston in Game Three, 19-8. Wakefield had been 12-10 during the regular
season, eating innings again. In Game
Three, after New York had already scored nine times, he volunteered to relieve
even though he had been slated to start Game Four. He pitched 3 1/3 innings midgame, more than
any Boston pitcher that day, and was touched for five runs. In doing so, he took one for the team,
foregoing his start. Doug Mirabelli,
Wakefield’s “personal catcher,” said, “You don’t want your bullpen to get blown
out….For him to be able to get out there and suck up some innings for us, that
was a huge help.”
When Game
Four rolled around, the Red Sox pulled out a win with some magic in the ninth
and then more magic in the 12th.
Game Five ran even longer, and Wakefield pitched the 12th, 13th,
and 14th innings. He was the
winner when David Ortiz – for the second night in a row – delivered the
game-ending hit.
The Red Sox
not only won the next two games but also won the series. That is the only one in MLB history to climb
back from a 0-3 deficit in the playoffs.
One moment Wakefield treasured the most came along not long after the
Red Sox won Game Seven and eliminated the Yankees. As the celebration in the clubhouse was
winding down, he was told he had a phone call.
It was the Yankees manager calling.
“He said, ‘Wake, this is Joe Torre.
I just wanted to congratulate you.
You’re one of the guys over there that I respect. Just remember to have fun. You guys deserve it.’ Afterward, I wrote him a note and told him how
much that meant to me. That’s one of the
highest compliments you ever get from an opposing manager at that point…It
really touched me deeply for him to call me.”
Boston then
swept the World Series over the St. Louis Cardinals, breaking an 86-year-old
“curse.” Wakefield appeared only in Game
One. He started, and though the Red Sox
supported him with seven runs, he gave up five in 3 2/3 innings and got no
decision. It was the last time pitched
in 2004.
Wakefield
was 16-12 (4.15) in the 2005 regular season, the winningest pitcher on the staff. His best game was a complete-game
1-0 loss to the Yankees on September 11, a three-hitter in which he struck out
a career-high 12 New Yorkers. Boston
returned, briefly, to postseason play, getting swept in the Division Series by
the eventual World Series winners, the Chicago White Sox. After the Red Sox lost the first two games on
the road, Game Three was at Fenway Park.
Wakefield was the starter and loser; in the top of the sixth, Paul
Konerko hit a two-run homer off him to give Chicago a 4-2 lead. The final score was 5-3.
Experience
had proven that it takes a certain talent to be able to corral the knuckleball
– some handled Wakefield’s better than others.
Boston’s first-string catcher Jason Varitek, experienced considerable
difficulty with the knuckler. Other
catchers caught Wakefield over the course of his career, and it was always a
challenge. Doug Mirabelli used an
outside softball catcher’s glove. Victor
Martinez wound up using a first baseman’s mitt, the better to help him snare
the ball.
Nonetheless,
that December, the Red Sox traded Mirabelli to the San Diego Padres for Mark
Loretta. After Wakefield started the
season 1-4, the Sox reacquired Mirabelli on May 1. Thanks to a State Police escort from Logan
Airport – Mirabelli changed into his catcher’s gear in the back seat of a car –
the catcher arrived at Fenway Park just in time to handle Wakefield for a start
against the Yankees. The Sox won the
game, but with four runs in the bottom of the eighth, just after Wakefield had
left the game. He won his next two
starts but lost two months in the second half of the season to a stress
fracture in his rib cage. He finished
the season losing his last three decisions and was 7-11 (4.63).
Though his
ERA edged up to 4.76 in 2007, once again the team around a pitcher truly
helps. Wakefield was 17-12 that year,
second in wins on the Red Sox only to Josh Beckett (20-7). He became a World Series Champion again, as
the Red Sox rolled over the Colorado Rockies with a sweep in the World Series.
Recurring
problems in the back of his shoulder kept Wakefield inactive for nearly two
weeks in August. As a result, he was
kept off the roster for the Division Series and the World Series. His only appearance during the postseason was
a start in Game Four of the ALCS against Cleveland. He gave up five runs and bore the
defeat. Maybe he could have pitched once
in the World Series, but he asked, “Are you going to get 100 percent of Tim
Wakefield? I don’t know that…It’s not
fair to the rest of the 24 guys in that clubhouse for me to put them through
that.”
He pitched
in just one more postseason game. In the
2008 regular season, though he brought his ERA down to 4.13, his win/loss
record was 10-11, fourth in wins among the Red Sox starters behind Daisuke
Matsuzaka, Jon Lester, and Beckett.
(That August, another Wakefield knuckleball disciple, Charlie Zink,
pitched his lone major-league game for Boston.
Ironically, it came because Wakefield was on the DL (disabled list)
again with a stiff shoulder.)
Wakefield’s one appearance in the playoffs was in Game Four of the ALCS
against the Tampa Bay Rays. He gave up
five runs in 2 2/3 innings and lost the 13-4 game. Including his two wins for the Pirates, this
left him with a postseason record of 5-7 (6.75).
In 2009,
once again Wakefield won in double digits for the Red Sox in the regular
season, 11-5 (4.58). only Beckett and
Lester won more. That year, Wakefield
was named by Tampa Bay’s Joe Maddon to the American League All-Star team, the
only year in which he earned the distinction.
He didn’t appear in the game, a 4-2 AL win.
Wakefield
was below .500 in his final two seasons: 4-10 in 2010 and 7-8 in 2011. Both years his ERA was over 5 (5.34 and
5.12). After winning his 199th
career game on August 24th, it took eight more starts until he won
#200, his last, on September 13th.
Only six other knuckleballers have reached that milestone as of 2023.
Wakefield
was just six wins short of the franchise record for wins, and during that final
week of the season, he told Fox Sports that the fans “deserved” to see him
break it. However, the team’s new
general manager Ben Cherington, said that while he respected the veteran, he
had to be honest with him about his chance of making the team. Wakefield decided it was time to call it a career, saying, “I’m still a competitor.
But ultimately I think this is what was best for the Red Sox and I think
this is what is best for my family, and to be honest with you, seven wins isn’t
going to make me a different person or a better man. His total of 3,006 innings pitched for the
Red Sox ranked first, 230 innings more than second-place Clemens.
Longevity of
tenure had a lot to do with Wakefield racking up 186 wins for the Red Sox. When he finished his career, he’d pitched 17
seasons for Boston. He was one of only
19 pitchers in major-league history to have spent 15 or more seasons with a
single franchise.
In 2010, he
won baseball’s Roberto Clemente Award, given to the player who “best
exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsman, community involvement and the
individual’s contribution to his team.”
From June
2012, Wakefield worked as a studio analyst for the New England Sports Network
(NESN) broadcasts of Red Sox games, frequently offering pregame and postgame
commentary. He is the Honorary Chairman
of the Red Sox Foundation and hosts a number of events such as the foundation’s
annual celebrity golf tournament. He has
also continued to help other knuckleballers develop their craft, notably Steven
Wright, who became an AL All-Star in 2016 for Boston.
On October
1, 2023, Tim Wakefield passed away of brain cancer at just 57 years old. Red Sox chairman Tom Werner was among many
who offered tributes to the man who spent 29 years in the organization as a
player, special assistant, and broadcaster.
“It’s one thing to be an outstanding athlete; it’s another to be an
extraordinary human being. Tim was
both. He was a role model on and off the
field, giving endlessly to the Red Sox Foundation and being a force for good
for everyone he encountered.”
A major source for this biography was Tim Wakefield’s autobiography, Knuckler: My Life with Baseball’s Most Confounding Pitch. In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, and the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com.
