Knuckler (11 page)

Even Leyland admitted to having been caught up in the moment.

"I had no idea of what to expect," the veteran manager said. "I didn't really know who Tim Wakefield was. A lot of people didn't."

When the Pirates lost Game 4 to fall behind in the series, 3–1, Leyland grew desperate. He had little confidence in Jackson in the aftermath of the Game 2 debacle, so he called upon veteran Bob Walk, who would prove to be nothing short of masterful in a complete-game performance that anchored a 7–1 Pittsburgh victory. Walk's performance trimmed Atlanta's series lead to 3–2, but the Pirates still seemed destined to fail as the series shifted back to Atlanta for Game 6 and, if necessary, Game 7. Like most everyone in Pittsburgh, Leyland had developed a great deal of confidence in his knuckleballer, who continued
to pitch in relative obliviousness as the Pirates continued their quest to reach the World Series.

Wakefield was not quite as dominating in Game 6 as he had been in Game 3—but he was close. The Pirates scored eight times in the second inning against left-hander Glavine—who was matched against Wakefield for the second time in the series—and rolled to a 13–4 victory that forced a final, decisive seventh game. Wakefield allowed single runs in the fourth and seventh innings, the latter of which came after he had a 13–1 lead. After Leyland opted to let his knuckleballer finish what he started, Wakefield gave up another pair of meaningless runs in the ninth, which accounted for the 13–4 final. The knuckleballer had thrown a total of 141 pitches, an amazing 92 of them for strikes.

Had the 1992 National League Championship Series ended there—or following the eighth inning of Game 7—Tim Wakefield, as a rookie, almost certainly would have been voted the most valuable player of the seven-game epic between Atlanta and Pittsburgh. Of course, it did not. Unavailable to pitch because of his 141-pitch masterpiece the night before, Wakefield watched from the dugout as the Pirates built a 2–0 lead behind a brilliant Drabek. The World Series was only outs away. Wakefield fully believed that the Pirates would win, that the World Series would come next, a belief that spoke not so much to his confidence as to his naïveté. Since the start of the 1991 campaign, Wakefield himself had accomplished everything he had set out to do. Combined, in the minor leagues and the majors and including the postseason, Wakefield had gone 35–13 over the span of two seasons. In 1992 alone—again including the playoffs and his time at Triple A—he had gone 20–4. Wakefield was borderline
unbeatable,
and he had the sense, the pure gut feeling, that things were playing out exactly as they were supposed to.

And yet, as Wakefield watched from the dugout, the Pirates began to teeter. Drabek, who had been brilliant all night, allowed a leadoff double to Terry Pendleton.
Okay, we're still up 2–0.
Then Braves outfielder David Justice reached on an untimely error by Pirates second baseman Jose Lind, putting runners at first and third, both potential
tying runs now on base.
Damn.
Then Drabek walked heavy-legged first baseman Sid Bream on four pitches, loading the bases and further igniting an Atlanta crowd that already was smelling blood, that similarly had come to see victory as a birthright, that continued the unforgettable, rhythmic
tomahawk chop
that had become customary at Fulton County Stadium and felt to Wakefield, quite frankly, like a war cry.

Uh-oh.
We're in trouble.

Thirteen pitches later, with the bases still loaded and the Pirates desperately clinging to a 2–1 lead by virtue of a sacrifice fly from Atlanta outfielder Ron Gant, Braves pinch-hitter Fernando Cabrera pulled a single through the hole between shortstop and third base. Wakefield all but gasped. Bonds fielded the ball and released the throw quickly—as usual—and Pirates catcher Mike LaValliere fielded the ball on a bounce. To Wakefield, as quickly as it all unfolded, the moment seemed suspended in time. Wearing a brace on his knee, a lumbering Bream then slid just beyond the tag of LaValliere as home plate umpire Randy Marsh made his decision—
Safe!
—and the Braves erupted into a celebration. For the Pirates, the ride was over. Wakefield was left to examine the fast and final events of a season that had felt just as furious, right up until the moment it crashed to a halt.

"At the time, that was probably the biggest impact of anybody that's ever come to the big leagues," Leyland said, recalling the effect that Wakefield had on the Pirates and, for that matter, the entire 1992 baseball season. "That kind of stuff just doesn't happen. That's a fairy tale."

Tim Wakefield, for his part, found it to be very real. To that point in his major league career, he had known nothing else. He believed that the 1992 season was just the start of a career that would be filled with winning, that he would soon get another chance at the World Series, that a return trip to October would be as simple as showing up and pitching.

But all too soon, Tim Wakefield would discover that baseball is as fickle as the pitch that had brought him to the major leagues in the first place.

***

Between the end of the 1992 season and the start of spring training in 1993, the Pittsburgh Pirates underwent massive changes, many of them triggered by a baseball landscape that, in need of major reform, was undergoing major renovations. Teams like the Pirates that played in small markets did not have the revenue to compete with larger clubs on an open market, which benefited the big spenders. Baseball was built on capitalism, not socialism, and so while teams like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox annually earned millions of dollars in local broadcast fees, teams like the Pirates earned relative pennies on the dollar. There was no sharing of wealth then. And so, when it came time for teams to bid on players, the big-market clubs had an enormous advantage over the smaller-market clubs, which more often than not had to restock their shelves with younger, less proven, less effective talent.

Following the 1992 season, the Pirates faced economic crisis. The team had drawn 1.8 million fans in 1992, but escalating player costs required the Pirates to slash payroll from $33 million in 1992 to $23 million in 1993, a 20 percent cut. For a club like Pittsburgh, that was an enormous downsizing, and it would turn the Pirates from a perennial championship contender (as they were in 1990, 1991, and 1992) into a club that would conclude the 2010 campaign with an incredible 18 straight losing seasons. During that period, the Pirates would lose the most games and post the worst winning percentage (including expansion franchises) of any club in baseball.

But while the Pirates bade farewell to, among others, Bonds and Drabek during the winter of 1992–93, Tim Wakefield did not seem especially concerned. He was too caught up in his own success. Wakefield reported to spring training as a star following his improbable ascension in 1992, and as most any 25-year-old would, he reveled in it.
We'll still win because we still have me.
What Wakefield neglected to acknowledge, of course, was that his performance had been a wild aberration, that the Pirates had succeeded because they had been a team, and that baseball is a game where the absence of one player can adversely affect another by changing the distribution of labor, workload, and demands.

"At the time, I didn't realize it. I just wanted to be
the man,
" Wakefield said. "I went from having two months in the big leagues to being the opening day starter."

The results were predictable, if not downright awakening. Wakefield opened the season with a 9–4 victory over the San Diego Padres, a game in which he had nine strikeouts to go along with nine walks. Four starts later, he walked 10 and threw 172 pitches, albeit in a 10-inning victory over a Braves team he was facing for the first time since the previous October. Wakefield subsequently went 11 outings without a victory—partly as the result of bad luck, partly as the result of relative ineffectiveness—and ended up in the bullpen for a time, his ERA ballooning to such heights (6.35) that the Pirates did what any team would do with a young player who was struggling: they sent him back to the minor leagues.

Wakefield did not know what hit him. The game that had seemed so easy to him only a year earlier was now impossibly difficult, and he was left to sort through the rubble with the Double A Carolina Mudcats, a team for which he had gone 15–8 in 1991 and one for which he never really wanted to play again. The Pirates, in fact, were sending Wakefield all the way back to Double A, leapfrogging Triple A Buffalo entirely, a decision that was both symbolic and, to Wakefield, crippling. Wakefield understood the significance as well as anyone. Triple A teams
flew
to road games, traveled more comfortably, and were treated relatively well. The Double A leagues meant bus trips, long days, and a bigger and longer uphill climb back to the big leagues. Wakefield's confidence was destroyed. He was devastated. He sulked.

Unsurprisingly, his season further deteriorated. Wakefield went 3–5 with a 6.99 ERA in nine starts, at which point even Mudcats loyalists began to question whether he belonged there. Wakefield was on the mound pitching one night when the public-address announcer revealed that Pirates general manager Cam Bonifay was in attendance to scout some of the younger players in the Pittsburgh organization, and some fans regarded that as an opportunity to express their feelings about the struggling young knuckleballer.

"Hey, Cam!" one spectator yelled loud enough for the whole sta
dium to hear. "Why don't you take Wakefield back to Pittsburgh with you and throw him in one of the three rivers? We're trying to win a pennant down here."

Wakefield would have chuckled had he not been embarrassed.

In hopes of boosting Wakefield's confidence, the Pirates recalled him after rosters expanded on September 1, but Wakefield still felt "lost." He felt as if he were "searching." Still, he concluded the 1993 season with a pair of brilliant, complete-game shutouts against the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies that allowed him to finish the year with a 6–11 record and 5.61 ERA, numbers that were an enormous disappointment given his contributions to the Pirates a year earlier. Nonetheless, the final two outings were an extremely encouraging sign, a suggestion to Wakefield and everyone else that he had reclaimed his grip.

I've got it back.

I can't wait until next year.

As it turned out, next year never came. In the aftermath of minor elbow surgery to remove a bone chip that had troubled him throughout the 1993 season, Wakefield had difficulty getting a feel for the knuckler throughout spring training. When camp broke, he wasn't even on the big league team, the Pirates having opted instead to send him to Triple A Buffalo with the hope of bringing him back to the majors within weeks.

It wasn't Double A, but still, Wakefield was overcome with the frustration of traveling
down
through the system, not
up
. He took the mound and constantly tinkered. He tried anything and everything to harness his knuckleball. He got little or no help from coaches to whom the knuckleball was foreign, and he crumbled beneath the weight of his own expectations and his prior success.

Wakefield spent the entire 1994 season pitching for the Bisons, going 5–15 with a 5.84 ERA in 30 outings (29 starts, one relief appearance). While he led the Bisons in starts (29), innings (175⅔), strikeouts (83), and complete games (4) and finished second in wins (5), he led the entire minor leagues—all teams at all levels—in virtually every negative pitching statistic, from hits (197) to runs (127) to walks (98) to home runs (27). In his mind, the games all ran together, one
bad start followed by another, then another, then another. Whatever control Wakefield had over his emotions disappeared as quickly as his command of the knuckler. He found himself incapable of the focus he had brought to the 1992 season or, for that matter, the end of 1993. He tried
everything.
He altered his grip. He tinkered with his delivery. Obsessing on regaining control of the pitch, maybe he tried too much. Like Kevin Costner at the driving range in
Tin Cup,
Wakefield felt like a golfer with a case of the shanks. He was willing to stand on one leg, with his hat on inside out and his pocket linings pulled out, if that posture would have brought back the effectiveness of his knuckleball. Like "Nuke" Laloosh in
Bull Durham,
he would have even tried breathing through his eyelids.

But nothing worked.

Ultimately, the Pirates reached their end with him, though that did not come until the spring of 1995, following a work stoppage that had cut short the 1994 major league season and canceled the World Series while simultaneously cutting into the start of the 1995 campaign. (At Triple A in 1994, however, Wakefield had no such luxury. He continued to pitch, continued to lose, continued to search, because the work stoppage did not affect minor league players.) By the time the work stoppage was settled and baseball was set to begin anew, the Pirates had decided that it was time to cut bait. Huyke could not pass Wakefield at the team's training site in Bradenton, Florida, without looking away. Leyland, to the present day, regarded it as one of the most difficult conversations he had ever taken part in, partly because of what Wakefield did for the Pirates in 1992, partly because he liked the pitcher personally.

"I really don't have the answer to that question. That's also kind of a mystery [like the knuckleball]," Leyland said when asked about the end of Wakefield's career in Pittsburgh. "The success came so fast. I don't know if the expectations mounted on Tim or not. He's one of the best people you'll ever meet and a wonderful human being. I always suspected that stuff just happened too fast. Everybody liked him. Everybody wanted a piece of him. He was the talk of the whole country.

"It was very difficult," Leyland continued. "I kind of remember sitting there with Cam Bonifay [the Pirates general manager], and it was just a very difficult thing. I think we felt that if he was ever going to get it back, it wasn't going to be with us. That was such heartbreak. In the long run, that was probably good for him, because I think it did kind of resurrect and resuscitate him, but it was hard at the time."