It was a heck of a weekend in sports. Most of my attention focused on Simone Biles landing the Yurchenko Double Pike, now called the Biles II, on the vault in Antwerp and the sheer dominance of the American women as they got started at the world championships. For those of you who like to count things, that’s the fifth element named for Biles: one on beam, two on floor, and now a second on vault.
I also watched football for the first time (excepting the Super Bowl, which I often have to write about) in probably a decade, interested to see how the hype about Taylor and Travis, they who need no last names, played out, somewhat surprised at how hard the Jets hung in against the defending champ Chiefs.
But in the midst of it all, I mostly processed grief at news that Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield had died at age 57.
Earlier in the week, Curt Schilling, Wakefield’s former teammate who is now doing his level best to become the 21st century’s version of Voldemort, disclosed on his podcast (and to be clear, I read about this — I do not listen to Schilling’s podcast) that Wakefield had cancer. This was news that the Wakefield family had kept close and was undoubtedly not something that Schilling should have shared. With the family’s blessing, the Red Sox then gave a statement acknowledging public concern for the beloved pitcher and asking for privacy.
A few days later, Wake was gone.
There is a moment in the film Field of Dreams when Terence Mann, a writer played by James Earl Jones, offers a soliloquy about baseball as a marker of time in America, a beautiful collection of words that would seem to live in my head, so often do they rise into my consciousness. “The memories will be so thick,” he says of the people who will come to the magical ball park built in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, “they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.”
For me, baseball serves as a symbol of time both historic — I am, after all, a history professor—- and personal. Driving to Boston with my mom, behind the wheel with my newly minted license, for Game 3 of the World Series in 1986 to see Oil Can Boyd take the mound. My bestie and me sitting on the first baseline with our young daughters, enchanted by the home run that Big Papi hit just for them. Walking into CitiField during COVID, one of a few thousand folks who filled the seats that day to see the Red Sox defeat the home team despite Jacob DeGrom’s best efforts.
But with pitchers, maybe especially Tim Wakefield, baseball memories are infinitely entangled with those of my dad, a man who never found scoreless pitching duels to be anything other than riveting, and who taught me to how to identify a pitch from the couch in our playroom.
Wake, who retired after the 2011 season as the oldest active player in the American League, was a knuckleballer. And knuckleballers are, in a word, fascinating. One of the winningest pitchers in Red Sox history, Wakefield had quite a resume: an All-Star nod in 2009, awarded the Roberto Clemente Award in 2010, and the kind of flexibility that builds championship teams, able to move between starter and relief, or even step aside, when his team needed him to. In the 2003 ALCS, he gave up the infamous home run to Aaron Boone in the 11th inning, sending the Yankees to the World Series and the Red Sox…well…yeah.
The next year, he played a pivotal role in turning the tables against the Yankees in the ALCS and was the starting pitcher in Game 1 of the World Series, laying the foundation for Boston’s historic sweep of St. Louis that gave us our first title in 86 years.
My dad, fascinated with all pitching styles, loved Wake’s slow sidearm throw that danced and fluttered its way to the plate depending on the weather on any given day. An away game against the Marlins was particularly fun, the conditions inside the dome especially favorable to Wake’s control. Catchers, never mind batters, had a heck of time figuring out where the ball was going to go.
Catching Wakefield was so difficult that for years, it was Doug Mirabelli’s sole job, until the Red Sox traded him to the Padres. On May 1, 2006, when it became clear that his replacement, Josh Bard, just couldn’t wrap his head — or glove — around the bewildering pitches, and Wakefield scheduled to start that night’s game, then-GM Theo Epstein went into emergency trade mode to get Mirabelli back. The catcher landed at Logan Airport with minutes to spare, changing into his uniform in the back of a state trooper’s SUV as the police escorted him to the ballpark, grateful members of Fenway’s faithful there to greet number 28 as he took his position back behind the dish.
That’s a lot of effort to keep a pitcher on the mound. But he wasn’t just any pitcher. In recent years, he joined the likes of Tom Caron and Jim Rice as a studio analyst for NESN’s Red Sox coverage, a nod to just how beloved he is by fans and respected by peers. Indeed, with his passing, from Jason Varitek’s tear-strewn face to the Mariners’ George Kirby tossing his first-ever knuckleball in a game, the legacy of Tim Wakefield beyond the walls of Fenway is secure.
Rest well, 49. You are missed.
Amy Bass is professor of sport studies and chair of the division of social science and communication at Manhattanville College. Bass is the author of ONE GOAL: A COACH, A TEAM, AND THE GAME THAT BROUGHT A DIVDED TOWN TOGETHER, among other titles. In 2012, she won an Emmy for her work with NBC Olympic Sports on the London Olympic Games.
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