Tim Wakefield walked the walk. There have always been players who have expressed a desire to commit themselves — not just as a player, but as a matter of identity — to a team. But in a season when the late pitcher’s life and Red Sox career will be celebrated, it’s worth recalling that few have backed the claim with actions in the
fashion that Wakefield did. Wakefield did not start his career with the Sox. He burst onto the big league scene with the Pirates in 1992, but then struggled in 1993, got demoted to the minors in 1994, and finally got released in the spring of 1995. Advertisement He signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox that spring. After time in Fort Myers,Fla., with famed knuckleballers Phil and Joe Niekro (who were coaching a women’s
baseball team that was training in the Sox’ extended spring training home base), Wakefield resurrected his career in Boston, becoming a quiet but critical part of a championship-chasing team while forging deep, permanent roots in the region. “He met his wife there. His child was born there. [The Red Sox] broke a longstanding [championship] drought there. He fell in love with his charitable work there,” recalled Wakefield’s agent, Barry Meister. “At some point by 2004 or 2005, the Red Sox felt like home.” In 2005, Wakefield was 38 years old and in the final season of a three-year, $13 million contract. He wanted to pitch for several more years. But as he and Meister discussed the possibility of an extension during spring training that year, Wakefield established his top priority: spending the rest of his career as a Red Sox. Meister had a suggestion. “I said, ‘I have an idea about doing an evergreen contract,’” recounted Meister. The concept had never before been employed. Wakefield would agree to a reasonable but below-market one-year guarantee — and then an option that would renew continually at the same amount. Advertisement Each time the Sox picked up Wakefield’s contract option for another year, they’d get another option for the following season. Meister called it evergreen. The Sox called it a perpetual option. The suggested structure of the deal was meant to make it easy for the Sox to keep Wakefield as long as he remained effective. “It was borne out of Tim’s desire to maximize his chance of being in Boston his whole career,” said Meister. “He knew he’d be home with Stacy, home with the Jimmy Fund. He just saw himself as a man of Boston.” The proposal had to come from Wakefield and Meister. The Sox, said executive VP of baseball operations Brian O’Halloran, wouldn’t have had the audacity to essentially ask a player to forgo free agency for the duration of his career. “It was clear he was a Red Sox. It was clear how much he loved the organization, how much he wanted to be there,” said O’Halloran. “[But] setting aside dollars and whatnot, it seems ‘too club-favorable.’ It would seem ridiculous to propose that to a player.” Meister checked with the MLB Players Association to make sure that the contract structure would be acceptable; executive director Michael Weiner signed off. MLB, after some deliberation, did likewise. The two sides hammered out the terms and announced the extension in April. Wakefield would receive a $4 million guarantee for the 2006 season, with a chance to earn up to an additional $1.25 million in incentives based on the number of starts he made. At the end of the year, the Sox would have an option to bring back the knuckleballer at the same terms for 2007; if they exercised it, they would have another option for 2008. And on and on. Advertisement Financially, the structure meant Wakefield punted the opportunity to increase his earnings as pitcher salaries inevitably increased over time. But so long as he was paid fairly, he didn’t care about maximizing dollars so much as he did about being valuable to the Red Sox. “At the time, I was thinking of it very much from the club’s perspective like, ‘Oh, this is great. It’s awesome that he wants to do this. It says a lot about him,’” said O’Halloran. “But mostly I was like, ‘Oh, this is great for us. We’ve got a good starting pitcher at a reasonable rate for as long as we want, as long as he’s good.’ “As time has gone on, I look back on it and realized just how incredible it is that he wanted to do that and how much it exemplifies who he was and how he thought about the organization.” The 2005 season was a tremendous one for Wakefield. In a year when the post-championship rotation was in tatters, Wakefield was the bedrock, going 16-12 with a 4.15 ERA and delivering 225 innings to help lead the team back to the postseason. Advertisement On the strength of that campaign, he surely would have been in line for a multiyear deal with a considerably larger guarantee than what he had gotten from the Sox. But Wakefield shrugged off such hypotheticals, instead suggesting the stability afforded by the extension had put him in better position to succeed on the mound. In the free agent era — since the abolition of the reserve clause — no other player had ever agreed to such a contract. Seemingly no other player ever will. “Not too long after we did the contract, maybe within a year or two, we got a memo [from MLB] that such a contract is no longer permissible, but Wake’s was grandfathered in,” said O’Halloran. “I don’t think there were going to be any more of them anyway, because it was such a unique set of circumstances and a unique person as far as Tim himself.” In retrospect, it was fitting that Wakefield’s deal was the only one of its kind. “This was kind of an iconic contract for kind of an iconic guy,” said Meister. The Sox picked up the option for the 2007, 2008, and 2009 seasons. After 2009, with Wakefield coming off back surgery, the two sides renegotiated, resulting in a two-year contract (with a lower base salary) for 2010 and 2011. He ended up spending 17 seasons pitching for the Red Sox, most in team history, setting franchise standards for starts (430) and innings (3,006). No pitcher has ever spent more time on the mound in service of the Red Sox. Advertisement After the 2011 season, the Sox were ready to move on. Wakefield could have continued his career, but found it impossible to consider doing so for any other organization. “We had clear indication the Yankees wanted to sign him to a one-year deal,” said Meister. “But I remember Tim saying, ‘Ever since I got here from Pittsburgh, I’ve worn one uniform. I’m not wearing anybody else’s uniform.’” His ties to the Sox endured — uninterrupted — beyond his playing career, as an adviser to the front office, NESN analyst, honorary chairman of the Red Sox Foundation, and in other ways that had no title. Wakefield will be forever remembered as someone whose commitment to the Red Sox was as far-reaching as anyone who ever played for them. “That was really important to him. He’s gone too soon. But he was a Red Sox every day,” said Meister. “It was a constant in his life. If family was one pillar that held the temple up, then the Red Sox were another.” Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com . Follow him @alexspeier .