I went back into the KEYS TO THE GAME archives to find some things I'd written about the late, great Tim Wakefield, my favourite baseball player, over the years It's a little scattered, there are some weird issues with converting from 20 year old files and nothing really captures how I feel about him, but here we go.
September 16, 2004
Congratulations to Tim Wakefield who passed Roger Clemens for number two on the Red Sox all time appearances list when he took the mound last night, despite his shaky performance. But appearances are a funny statistic. If a pitcher enters a game but clearly isnít really ìall thereî does that count as an appearance? Jose is thinking about Calvin Schiraldi here.
Jose is also a little surprised by the list. Jose knew that Bob Stanley would be number one, but he didnít expect Clemens to be number two. Jose sort of figured it would be Greg Harris, because as best Jose can recall, Harris appeared in 236 games in the 1990 season alone.
Still, congratulations to Wake are in order. When Jose bought a Wakefield jersey in 1995 in the middle of his 14-1 streak, Jose never thought Wakefield would be the last member of that team still with the organization. Jose was almost sure Dwayne Hosey would hang around longer.
(Note: Because Jose worked at Fenway that summer, it is one of his formative seasons, along with 1999, when he lived in Kenmore Square, and this season, when he writes KEYS. To this day, every time Alan Embree runs out of the pen wearing number 43, Jose thinks, look we reacquired Stan Belinda.)
October 31, 2004 (Championship Parade)
The other highlight was when Joseís all time favorite Red Sox Tim Wakefield came by. Jose was wearing his Wakefield jersey as usual and got the idea that he should take it off and hold it up to the window so Wake could see that he is appreciated. Jose got Wakefieldís attention, but when Wakefield saw Jose unbuttoning his shirt (Note: Jose had a T-shirt on underneath) he got a little freaked out and looked away. Jose thinks that Wakefield thought that some random guy was going to flash him and got nervous. Needless to say, Jose backed off and left his shirt on.
April 20, 2005
1. Congratulations to Tim Wakefield for signing what is effectively a lifetime contract with the Red Sox and far more importantly, for making Jose look like a genius.
Itís easy for Jose to say that Wakefield is his all time favorite Red Sox now that he has ten years of distinguished service with the team including three spectacular innings of relief in Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS, but it was true in 1995 too. It was in 1995, that Jose proudly used his 10 percent Fenway employee discount to drop almost two days pay on an authentic Tim Wakefield road jersey. Who knew at the time that Wakefield would be the last member of the 1995 AL East Champions to remaining with the team? Jose knew, thatís who. (Note: Trot Nixon has been with the organization longer, but not with the Major League club.)
While other fans have been forced to deface or retire their Vaughn, Clemens and Nomar jerseys, Jose has worn his Wakefield jersey year after year after year, secure in the knowledge that he will never have to remove the name or the number, each of which added $20 to the price of the garment.
In fact, Jose can only think of two decisions in his entire life that were as shrewd as the purchase of that jersey. The first was buying a tuxedo for his junior prom. Jose has worn that thing so many times that itís saved him a fortune. The key is getting the adjustable waist and the shawl cut. While proper lapels get wider and narrow with fashion, the shawl always stays the same. With a shawl cut tuxedo, one is never in style, but one is also never out of style. Actually, this is Joseís life philosophy. He is never completely in vogue but never completely out of vogue either. Jose's second shrewd decision was choosing the moniker ìJose Melendez ather than Dario Veras. Iím Dario Veras and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME. See no rhythm at all.
June 2, 2005
Sox starter Tim Wakefield suffered his fourth straight loss last night for the first time in four years. In his post game comments, Wakefield, who was swatted for three home runs, compared his knuckleballs last night to the male characters in the work of Jane Austen.[They] didnít have any depth, he said.
June 7, 2005
After recording his fifth straight loss, Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield continued to compare his pitching struggles to reading the works of Jane Austen. ìIím trying to find the positives now, but itís really difficult,said Wakefield. Jose hopes that Wakefield regains his form so he can start comparing his pitches to the novels of William Faulkner with quotes like They're very confusing, but extremely good.
May 11, 2007 Jose loves Tim Wakefield and Jose loves the knuckleball. Or more accu- rately, Jose loves Tim Wakefield because of the knuckleball. This is not a secret.
Time and time again, Jose has described how he became enamored of the knuckleball while watching one of the Niekro brothers on The Baseball Bunch. (Note: Isn’t it time for a new Baseball Bunch? Could Barry Bonds play the Johnny Bench role, teaching kids the fundamentals, like hitting, throwing and proper use of performance enhancing drugs? “Cream on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, clear on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays kids. But on Sunday you rest. That’s God’s time.) Jose has described his lifelong effort to throw knuckleball and how it has resulted in him throwing exactly two out of, perhaps 10,000 pitches thrown. Jose has even claimed that he likes the knuckleball because it is like magic. It is the baseball equivalent of having a 5’3’’ NBA player who is in the league solely on his ability to hit half court set shots. At least that’s why Jose thought he loved the knuckleball. But he has had a change of heart. He has, if you will, flip flopped or perhaps sandaled.
Jose loves the knuckleball, because it is a metaphor for life. maybe not for everyone’s life, but for Jose’s life. The thing about the knuckleball that is so extraordinary is that unlike other pitches, it cannot be controlled, only directed, managed. Tim Wakefield cannot force the knuckleball up or down in the zone. He cannot choose for it to be a strike or a ball. What he can do is affect how sharply it breaks by speeding it up or slowing it down. And time after time, he can repeat, with the greatest possible precision, the exact motions that have brought him, and other knuckleballers before him, optimal results. Sometimes the outcomes are excellent, and some- times, like now or in his magical 1995 stretch, they are astonishingly good for lengthy stretches. At others, such as when he was left off the 1999 ALCS roster after he seemed capable of blowing a 98 run lead in Game 4 of the ALDS, nothing he does seems to matter.
This is how life goes for Jose. He keeps the fingernails of his being trimmed and filed to exactly 3mm, he goes out of the figurative pitching motion and does his best to make the little tweaks required to keep the knuckleballs of daily life breaking hard over the plate. Sometimes the results are wonderful. Sometimes the Jason Giambis of despair, the Derek Jeters of adversity swing and miss and look as foolish as jesters. Sometimes, even thought they swing and miss, the ball evades the catcher and sneaks to the back stop, as seemingly good fortune melts into bad. But other times, there is Aaron Boone. Other times, Jose does the best he can, rotates the horsehide of his being forward by exactly one-fourth of a rotation, and still, there is no break, no movement. Whether it is a gust of wind from the frozen north, a butterfly batting its wings in Malaysia or a fan sneezing in section 23, the knuckleball fails to knuckle, the good intentions yield bad results and the ball makes an abrupt about face into the bleachers and into the emotional void of failure.
Jose cannot control his life any more than Tim Wakefield can control his knuckleball. He can only put faith in the soundness of his actions, the purity of his intentions and know that when his wins and losses are counted up at the end of the season, his record will be a little above five hundred. No, he may not be extraordinary, but he will be effective, he will be valued and maybe, just maybe he will hit that hot streak, that mystical spot at just the right time, and he can do something truly legendary
May 27, 2007
Tim Wakefield is the Habsburg Empire. He just is. Both of them, the Austrians and the Spaniards, and in every iteration. From the Holy Roman Empire, to the Austrian Empire to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that’s what Wakefield is. Yes, sometimes, in 1995 for instance, he looks like the Mongols, absolutely ravaging opponents, and other times, say late 1999 when he was left off the ALCS roster, he looks less like an empire at all and far more like on of those peaceful little tribes that was conquered and lost to history. But when taken in his entirety, Wakefield is most definitely the Habsburgs.
You can go right back to the beginning with the comparison, in that both Wakefield and the Habsburgs rose not because of their competence, but because of their incompetence. Whereas Frederick III was elected the first Habsburg Holy Roman Empire, precisely because other monarchs viewed him as too incompetent to comprise their power, Wakefield
was forced into the knuckleball by his failure as an infielder. Both the Habsburgs and Wakefield would fulfill their destinies almost by accident.
Let Jose describe the essence of Habsburg rule. The Habsburgs came to dominate much of Europe. Their empire, at times stretched as far East as what it now Ukraine and as far West as Spain and as far South as Sicily (Note: Though there was lots in the middle they did not rule, and the extents of their empire varied dramatically over the centuries.) Yet, they achieved this spectacular success, despite utter mediocrity and significant incompetence. How pathetic were they militarily? Perhaps their greatest hero is Prince Eugene of Savoy, who staved off the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683. That’s right; their greatest military hero was French!
No, the unofficial motto, of the Habsburgs was “Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube,” “Let others wage war, you - happy Austria - marry!” The Habsburgs could not win on the battlefield, so they won with the through the subtle trickery of matrimony.
So is any of this starting to sound like a pitcher you know? Tim Wakefield has somehow managed to gather 158 career wins and to creep into the top 100 on the all time strikeout list, despite not being particu- larly good. Just like the Habsburgs, he has had remarkable success despite lacking major league stuff. Just as the Habsburgs relied on matrimony, Wakefield has used the equally subtle knuckleball to escape his limitations. Moreover, just as the Habsburgs produced only two leaders of any distinc- tion, Maria Theresa an Charles V of Spain, so too, had Tim Wakefield only two seasons of particular distinction, his debut year where he went 8-1 for the Pirates and his remarkable 1995 campaign. If one wishes, one can add Joseph II/Wakefield’s 2002 campaign to the list of competence.
But that’s where the analogy ends. The Habsburg’s Empire ended, with Gavrilo Princip’s bullet in Sarajevo. Yes, Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s death did not end the Empire on that day, but in set in motion the awful events of World War I that would eventually lead to the death of their empire. Wakefield has already met his Princip, in Aaron Boone, who likePrincip was a small and insignificant man who fate tabbed for one brief moment of importance. That moment in 2003, when Boone’s home run ended the 2003 ALCS as surely and as quickly as an assassin’s bullet ended the life of the Habsburg heir, should have set in motion the torturous end of Tim Wakefield’s career if the analogy was to hold true.
And yet here we are, four years later. Wakefield pitched brilliantly in Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS and won a championship that year, and today he continues to start. His starts remain enigmatic, inconsistent and his seasonal numbers without particular distinction. Is it what we as fans would want? Probably not, but perhaps we should be satisfied with it. After all, the Habsburgs, certainly would have given anything four years after Franz Ferdinand’s Assassination to be lumbering along in their stylized mediocrity, rather than accelerating towards disasterous defeat and dissolution.
