COMMENTARY : Wakefield Is Keeping the Hitters, Observers Guessing

Tim Wakefield’s story is a mystery in spikes. Not a whodunit, but a howdunit.

How did Wakefield, a 29-year-old knuckleballer, go from being one of baseball’s worst pitchers in 1994 to one of its best in 1995? How did he go, in less than four months, from being released in Pittsburgh to being the ace in Boston and the favorite to win the American League’s Cy Young award?

How could Wakefield, 14-1 after beating the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday at Fenway Park, travel directly from the lowest low--he was 5-15 in triple-A last year--to the highest high without stopping for even a little mediocrity in between?

Don’t ask him. He doesn’t know.

“I’m throwing basically the same as I did last year,” he said the other day, sitting by his locker in the Red Sox clubhouse. “The only thing is I’m being a little more aggressive. Just letting the ball go instead of trying to throw darts with it.”

When his questioner paused at that explanation, obviously hoping for more, Wakefield smiled. “Sorry,” he said.

It’s OK. It’s just human nature for us to want the mystery solved, explained; to want Wakefield to point to the sage advice of some obscure guru. But it just isn’t there.

He was terrible in Buffalo last year and he is unhittable in Boston this year, and the explanation lies somewhere in the capricious twists and turns of his pitch and his sport, but darn if he can identify it.

“I’m not asking questions right now,” he said. “I’m just going with the flow.”

And all he wants is for this “flow” to last a little longer. Like, say, the rest of the season.

He knows that it won’t last forever, that he’ll fall from grace somewhere down the line. That’s what happens in baseball, as he learned after he came from nowhere to pitch the Pirates within reach of the World Series in 1992; he was back in double-A by the middle of 1993.

“I have experienced the highest highs and lowest lows in a short period of time,” he said. “I want this [run] to continue, of course. But my goal is to wind up on a more even keel. That’s what makes a long career.”

He is a native Floridian with a goatee, approachable yet intense. He doesn’t talk to reporters either on the day before or the day he pitches. “I like to get single-minded,” he said.

Drafted as a first baseman, he became a pitcher, turned to the knuckleball and made it to the majors in three years. He was 8-1 down the stretch and 2-0 in the playoffs for the Pirates in 1992, but his knuckler flattened out and he spent the next two years getting hammered (14-30) at three levels.

“I had a brutal year last year,” he said.

Seeing no improvement this spring, the Pirates released him. The Red Sox had no great expectations when they picked him up. How could they?

But they sent him to extended spring training in Fort Myers, Fla., where he spent a week in consultation with Joe and Phil Niekro, the famous knuckleballing brothers. Phil now manages the Colorado Silver Bullets women’s team, which was training at the Red Sox’s facility.

“He told me to get more aggressive, basically,” Wakefield said.

No great secret other than that?

“Not really.”

Called up after four starts at triple-A, he now has as many victories as Mike Mussina (13) going into Mussina’s start last night, and a lower ERA (1.61) than Greg Maddux.

Howdunit? Well, remember that the knuckleball is baseball at its most mysterious anyway.

Instead of putting spin on the ball, the pitcher intentionally releases it softly and without spin, letting wind currents and the ball’s natural motion carry it. The ball dips and swerves unpredictably.

Wakefield looks ridiculous throwing 50 m.p.h. pitches at major league hitters. But the hitters are the ones looking ridiculous.

“As long as he stays in this groove, forget it,” Texas slugger Will Clark said recently.

Wakefield is a fitting centerpiece for the Red Sox, who are running away with the AL East in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year.

New England’s loyal and fatalistic fans have embraced him, hopeful that this ace, instead of Roger Clemens, will be the one to end the Curse of the Bambino. The Red Sox last won the World Series in 1918.

“I’m just glad we got him,” first baseman Mo Vaughn said. “I don’t know where we’d be without him.”

Wakefield is just glad to have a job. “After last year, I was happy someone wanted me,” he said.

“I had to battle like crazy. There were a lot of discouraging times. But I never gave up. I always trusted myself and my pitch.”

Oddly enough, he has stopped reading the newspapers and watching ESPN’s SportsCenter, behavior more typical of a slumping player, not a runaway success.

“When I was going bad, I heard and read so much criticism of me that I started to believe it,” he said. “I think I’m better off in the long run not listening this year, either.”

He knows he is experiencing a freak of baseball nature that he can’t explain, and he knows, as well as anyone, that he can’t keep it up forever. But another two months?

“That,” he said, “would be real nice.”