The thought first came to him in a clubhouse gone numb from the shock of a season suddenly cut short with agonizing finality. It resurfaced again on the plane ride that brought the Red Sox home to Boston from the Bronx in a funereal state.
“I was terrified,” Tim Wakefield said, “that I would be remembered like [Bill] Buckner. I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to show my face in Boston again. But I soon realized that wasn’t close to being the case.”
Boston’s 2003 season was held in Wakefield’s knuckleball grip on the first pitch of the bottom of the 11th inning of Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. He floated a knuckler to Aaron Boone, the New York Yankees’ third baseman, who had faced Wakefield six times in the ALCS and been retired all six times.
But not this time. Boone swung at Wakefield’s pitch and hit it into the left-field seats, propelling the Yankees into the World Series and pushing Wakefield to the brink of a place no Boston baseball player ever should have to go again.
“I … I can’t explain it,” Wakefield said nearly three months later. “I felt great. I wasn’t sore from the start before. I really felt good. Dana [LeVangie, the bullpen catcher] was having trouble catching it, so that gave me a sign that it was moving good.”
Wakefield had entered the game in the 10th inning with the score tied 5-5 and retired all three batters he faced.
“I went into the game, I felt good,” he said. “I got through that one inning. I didn’t strike anyone out, but I had good movement on my pitches. I went to warm up for the next inning, everything seemed to be great.
“I don’t know what happened. You know, you try to throw strike one, get ahead of a guy. I just left it up.”
As soon as Boone made contact, Wakefield suspected the outcome.
“Yeah, I had a pretty good idea,” he said. “I kind of turned around, which I normally don’t do. I didn’t watch it hit the seats, but as soon as he hit it I pretty much knew it was out.
“I just walked straight to the dugout and grabbed my stuff.”
A `fun’ season
Wakefield, 37, has been playing professionally since 1988, when the Pittsburgh Pirates drafted him as a first baseman in the eighth round. A year later, he was converted to a pitcher.
“Ten years I’ve been playing in the big leagues, 15 years I’ve been playing professional baseball, this [season] was the most fun I’ve ever had in my whole career,” he said.
“I’ve always said you can’t buy chemistry. When you’re adding and subtracting people, you’ve got to take a hard look at that. “Our chemistry was unbelievable. I’ve never been a part of a team that was a team. When I first got here the saying about the Red Sox was 25 players, 25 cabs. That’s gone out the window. We all hang out together.”
When the Red Sox clinched a playoff spot at home against the Orioles on Sept. 25, Wakefield was among the players who ran around the field, slapping hands with as many fans as he could and spraying champagne on others.
“That was the biggest thing for me, sharing it with our fans,” Wakefield said, “and with the guys on our team who had never been in that position before.
“Mike Timlin, myself and Todd Jones, it was weird, but the three of us ended up in the middle of the field, sitting on the mound. We were just so blessed. I think we all felt the same way. I feel so fortunate putting that uniform on every day. I work, or play a child’s game, for a living. Yes, it’s work, but it’s still a game, something I started playing when I was 5 years old.”
Back from adversity
The last time the Red Sox were in the playoffs, in the 1999 season, Wakefield suffered the indignity of being left off the team’s roster for the ALCS against the Yankees. On the outs with pitching coach Joe Kerrigan, Wakefield expected his days in Boston were numbered.
A free agent, Wakefield nearly signed a contract with the Minnesota Twins, but in the end decided to remain with the Red Sox, a fortuitous outcome for the ball club, as Wakefield pitched well as a starter and a reliever in 2000 and ’01. He continued to serve effectively in a dual role the next season, when Kerrigan was dumped as manager and replaced by Grady Little.
Last season, for the first time since 1998, he took a regular turn in the rotation, making 33 starts, pitching 202 1/3 innings, winning 11 games and finishing with a 4.09 ERA, second to Pedro Martinez among Boston starters.
He pitched twice against the Oakland in the division series, losing Game 2 and working 1 2/3 innings of relief in the Game 4 win.
He got the win in Game 1 against the Yankees in the ALCS, going six innings and allowing two runs in a 5-2 victory. He was just as strong in Game 4, allowing a run in seven innings in a 3-2 win that sent the series back to New York.
With two wins in a series in which neither Martinez nor Derek Lowe had a victory, Wakefield was a candidate to be named the series MVP.
Wakefield said before Game 6 he told Little he’d be willing to be in the bullpen if needed. Wakefield couldn’t recall if he made the same offer before Game 7, when the atmosphere in the clubhouse was one of “relaxed excitement.” All he knows for sure is that he was in the bullpen from the beginning of the game, in which Martinez took a 5-2 lead into the eighth inning.
But the Yankees famously tied the game in the eighth off Martinez. After Timlin held the Yankees scoreless in the ninth, Wakefield entered in the 10th. He got Hideki Matsui to ground out, and Jorge Posada and Jason Giambi to fly out.
The Red Sox failed to score in the top of the 11th off Yankees closer Mariano Rivera, who was working his third inning.
More Top Picks Best Espresso Grinders For Home
Wakefield came out of the third-base dugout for the Yankees’ 11th. Standing on the on-deck circle was Aaron Boone.
Unbearable scene
The Yankees charging from the first-base dugout, leaping with joy and relief … Boone circling the bases … the Yankee Stadium crowd shaking the ancient ballyard to its hallowed foundation yet one more October night. . . .
Wakefield insists he saw none of it. When he picked up the warmup jacket and towel he’d left on the bench and left the dugout, he recalls Little and pitching coach Dave Wallace, sitting at the end of the dugout nearest to the bat rack, patting him in consolation as he passed by on his way to the clubhouse.
“That’s the only thing I remember,” Wakefield said. “I walked in. I walked to the clubhouse. I sat down at my locker and put my head down.”
And he cried.
“Regardless of the situation, I was asked to do a job, and I didn’t get it done,” he said. “I was disappointed in myself. I felt like I let my whole team down. People said we wouldn’t have gotten this far if it wasn’t for me. I believed that in a sense, but I was still asked to do something and I couldn’t get it done.”
Timlin was the first to come to him, placing an arm around his shoulders and telling him he had no reason to be ashamed. Little said a few words to the team. So did Nomar Garciaparra.
Wakefield was exhausted by the time the team plane returned to Boston about 3:30 a.m. On that quiet flight home, he thought again about Buckner, the first baseman who never has been forgiven for the error he made in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, when the Red Sox had been a strike away from winning the Series.
“Buckner, I think it was unfair what happened to him,” Wakefield said. “He played his heart out for this organization. One play ruined him as a Bostonian. I feel that was kind of wrong, but I understand it too.”
But Wakefield soon discovered that he would be spared the burden of blame that is Buckner’s legacy. A couple of nights after getting back to Boston, he and wife Stacey went out for dinner, with Wakefield braced for the worst.
“I felt like I’d let a lot of people down,” he said.
Instead . . .
“I got a lot of thank yous,” he said. “In restaurants, or while I was running errands, people came up to me and said, `Thanks.”‘
Moving on
Has he seen the replay? Countless times, beginning the night Boone connected, and day after day since.
“I went on with my life,” Wakefield said. “I don’t think it’s going to affect me. Sometimes bad things can happen. As long as you go out there and try hard, that’s all you can do.
“It’s not going to get my self-esteem down. I’m disappointed that it happened. I’m truly sorry not only for the organization but our fans who have rooted for us for so long. But I tried my best. I left everything I have on the field.
“We entertained a ton of people last summer. It was a lot of fun for the people of New England to get behind us and to root for us as hard as they did. That was just awesome.”
One flat knuckleball to Aaron Boone, as painful as it was, can’t change that.