Popular former Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield died of an inoperable brain tumor in his 57th year at the end of last season. Wakefield was famously a knuckleballer, a rare breed in the game, and a athlete admired and loved by fans and all who came in contact with him, another rare breed. One of those admirers was Seattle Mariners pitcher George Kirby, known for being a virtuoso with pitch grips.
Kirby was the starting pitcher in yesterday’s afternoon game between the Mariners and the Red Sox at Fenway Park. It was an important game for both clubs, which are among those battling for a playoff slots in the American League. Statcast now reads pitches instantly, announcing whether a pitch is a fastball, curve, slider, cutter, splitter, change-up, etc. based on its database on each pitcher and the speed, spin-rate and course of the ball. When Kirby began the game by throwing his first pitch to Boston leadoff man Jarren Duran, Statcast shocked observers by stating that Kirby had thrown a pitch that wasn’t normally in his repertoire: a knuckleball.
After the game (the Red Sox won), Kirby confirmed that he had thrown Wakefield’s signature pitch in his home park as a tribute. “He was a special player,” Kirby said. “So just being able to do it here in Boston was pretty cool.”
It was the second time Kirby had thrown a knuckler to recognize the 200 game winning, two-time World Series champion pitcher he admired. He also threw on one on the final day of last year’s regular season in Texas, on the day Wakefield died, October 1, 2023, to strike out Corey Seager, the Rangers shortstop and eventual World Series MVP.
Yesterday’s knuckler was not a particularly good one: it had a speed of about 74 mph (Wakefield’s fastball, which he threw as a change-up, was slower than that; his knuckleball typically topped out in the upper 50s) and a spin rate of 155 rpm (the best knuckleballs aren’t spinning at all), but the ball wasn’t hit out of the park for a home run in a 1-0 loss, which would have been problematical (though that’s just moral luck). As it turned out, the pitch was just a silent, professional salute by one major league player to the memory of another who deserved one.
Bravo.
Ethics Alarms 
What if Duran had launched the pitch over the Green Monster for the winning and only run of the game?
Speed-reading or skimming again? Hmmmm? That was mentioned in the post…
Hah! You’re right. And I was going to assume you’d play the moral luck card, to which I’d have responded, “Grandstanding.”
This reminds me a little of Bo Kimble, the scoring machine for Loyola-Marymount basketball back in the Westhead days. When teammate Hank Gathers collapsed and died during a game, Kimble shot his first free-throw left-handed in every subsequent game…in Gathers’ honor.
Tim Wakefield was a class act – on the field, in the salary-negotiation room, and everywhere else. Kudos to George Kirby for recognizing and honoring that. It gives me more hope for baseball.
Yes, bottom line, it was very sweet. And the likelihood of the batter being able to hit that slow a pitch when it was totally not on the scouting report was non-existent.
That and the fact that it was about 6 inches higher than the strike zone. As Wakefield himself knew well, you never know what a knuckler is going to do.