In heartbreaking news for baseball fans, the Boston Red Sox announced on Sunday that former pitcher and 2x World Series winner Tim Wakefield has passed away. Sporting a career that spanned over 19 seasons, Wakefield definitely has a stat line that screams “Hall of Famer”. He appeared in 627 MLB games and amassed a 4.41 ERA and a 1.79 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He will be known for being one of the last knuckleballers before the pitch was abandoned, with only one left in MLB today.
It was expected that he would take up a position as a coach, but he instead chose the silent life of retirement. In the last few months of his life, he had been battling cancer and it seems that he finally had to yield to it. However, he lives on, in the hearts of baseball fans and people who were lucky to have known him while he lived.
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3x SB Champ mourns 2x WS Winner’s loss
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3x SB Champion and former New England Patriots wide receiver, Julian Edelman took to X (formerly, Twitter) to pay respects to the departed soul. He captioned the tweet,? “Great player, great person.” Tim Wakefield was originally drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates as a third baseman in 1988. He then converted to pitcher in 1990 and made his MLB debut in 1992. But by 1995, his career with the Pirates fizzled out and he was released before the Boston Red Sox picked him up.
Great player, great person. #RIP https://t.co/lhvE1blEz8
— Julian Edelman (@Edelman11) October 1, 2023
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The news about his death came as somewhat of a shocker. Reports about his health had surfaced days earlier after Curt Schilling, his former teammate, revealed the Wakefields’ personal health information. However, the Red Sox are yet to reveal the exact cause of his death. Wakefield is survived by his wife, Stacy, who is also battling cancer, and their children, Trevor and Brianna.