Tim Wakefield
- Pittsburgh Pirates (1992-1993)
- Boston Red Sox (1995-2011)
- All-Star (2009)
- 2 x winner in the World Series (2004 and 2007)
Stephen Timothy " Tim " Wakefield ( born August 2, 1966 in Melbourne, Florida ) is a former American professional baseball player in the Pittsburgh Pirates and Boston Red Sox in Major League Baseball. Wakefield played the position of the pitcher and was one of the rare knuckleball pitcher.
Career
Pittsburgh Pirates
Wakefield was established in 1988 originally drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates first base man, but proved to be in this position as not good enough for the level in Major League Baseball. Rather than stopgap Wakefield retrained to the pitcher by specializing in the rare thrown knuckleball. After he established himself in the minor leagues with this " flutter ball," Wakefield gave his debut in 1992, immediately secured 8-1 victories and contributed to the strong season the Pirates, the first in the final of the National League with 3:4 victories against Atlanta Braves documents. Wakefield pitched here twice against Braves ace pitcher Tom Glavine and won both games. In the follow- 1993 Wakefield could not confirm his services and spent the entire 1994 season in the minor leagues before he was traded to the Boston Red Sox.
Boston Red Sox
Wakefield tied in Boston finally on his strong rookie season, established himself with 16:8 victories as the second best Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens after and was third in the election to the Cy Young Award for the best thrower. Over the next three years, Wakefield won 41 games until he slipped back into second place after the signing of Pedro Martinez and was only used as a relief pitcher. 1999 " managed " it is a rare Uncaught Third Strike, as one of the uncontrolled fluttering Knuckleballs after a third strike slipped out of the glove of his catcher and was therefore invalid. In 2003, he came up with the Red Sox in the American League final against arch-rival New York Yankees, as he experienced in Game 7 of one of his bitterest Games: after the Red Sox had squandered a 5-2 lead in the 8th inning, Wakefield on as a substitute in the 10th inning with the score at 5-5 as relief pitcher and conceded the game-winning home run by Aaron Boone. But the next year he took sporting revenge when he contributed with several strong -pitch relief missions against the Yankees that the Red Sox turn Game 7 win against the Yankees and then the World Series took 2004. Over the next three years the veteran remained a strong pitcher who import 40 wins and the Red Sox also won the World Series in 2007. After the age of 42 years, he received 11:5 victory in 2009, he was elected as the first and only time the All- Star game. Wakefield pitched until the year 2011, before he stopped at the age of 44 years with exactly 200 won games.
Throwing technique
Wakefield was one of the rare knuckleballer in Major League Baseball. The speed of his pitches was for professional relationships slow 100 km / h, but unleashed so unpredictable that opposing batter barely had a chance to hit the ball. Wakefield's secondary pitches were a about 20 km / h faster fastball, a curveball and a changeup - knuckleball, which again was 10 km / h slower than his regular knuckleball. Since he needed barely fast pitches, he could play baseball until the age of 44 years in the Major League. He is one of only 114 pitchers (July 2013) that have 200 or more wins. But Wakefield's unpredictable pitches also brought difficulties: 186 times met his pitches opposing shock people, so it is in this negative statistic # 7 in the eternal rankings. In addition, Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek was so unnerved to catch Wakefield trudelnde Knuckleballs that Boston catcher Doug Mirabelli reserve repurposed to Wakefield's personal catcher.
Wakefield is the model of Eri Yoshida, the first pitcher in Japanese professional league. She is also a Knuckleballerin.
Private life
Wakefield has been married to his wife, Stacy, with whom he has two children. In his spare time he works for underprivileged children.