By: Chuck Miller
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Curt Schilling violated Tim Wakefield’s trust.

I’m going to start this blog post by remembering a great pitcher and an even greater person.

Tim Wakefield was a baseball player who changed his trajectory to the big leagues by moving from first base to the pitching mound. And unlike nearly every other pitcher in the sport at that time, Wakefield’s main pitch was a knuckleball.

If you’re not familiar with the knuckleball, it’s a pitch that will frustrate batters day and night.

That ball had NO rotation on it. You didn’t need a radar gun to gauge its speed, you could have used a sundial instead.

That knucklball helped Tim Wakefield and the Pittsburgh Pirates to the playoffs way back in 1992. That was the Pirates that had Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla and Doug Drabek in the lineup.

A few years later, Tim Wakefield joined the Boston Red Sox, where he became a solid part of their rotation. And after the 2003 season, where he threw one bad pitch to Aaron Bleepin’ Boone that took the Yankees to the 2003 World Series, Wakefield stayed in the locker room, answered every question from the media, and took the loss personally.

One year later, the Red Sox – with Wakefield in the lineup – won their first World Series in 86 years. He would help the Sox win a second championship in 2007. Wakefield finished his career in 2011, having pitched for 19 years in the big leagues, amassing a 200-180 won-loss record, two World Series rings and a 2009 All-Star Game appearance. Only Cy Young and Roger Clemens have more wins in a Red Sox uniform than did Tim Wakefield.

During and after his playing career, Wakefield was a tireless supporter for various charities. Nominated eight times for the Roberto Clemente Award for charity and humanity, Wakefield won it in 2010.

Tim Wakefield was beloved in Boston. He was beloved in baseball.

Which makes news from the past few days painful and sad.

The other day, Wakefield’s teammate on those Red Sox squads, pitcher Curt Schilling, violated Wakefield’s personal privacy by revealing on a podcast that Wakefield was suffering from inoperable and terminal brain cancer. At the time, Wakefield’s illness was not publicly disclosed; Wakefield chose to keep the matter private.

Here’s the thing. Not everybody needs to know if you have cancer, or how you plan to deal with it. For every person who wants to share their diagnosis and that they’re going to fight it every step of the way, there are others who want to keep their diagnosis private and deal with the news in their own way. And in addition to that – not every cancer is immediately treatable or curable. And to suggest how someone deals with a cancer diagnosis is or isn’t the “correct way” to deal with it is to be ignorant of that person’s desires – or the desires of their family and friends and medical team.

In that podcasting moment, Curt Schilling made Tim Wakefield’s cancer all about how Curt Schilling felt about it He violated Wakefield’s privacy.

Which was made more painful by the news yesterday that cancer claimed Tim Wakefield’s life. He was only 57.

In those final days, the moments that he chose to spend privately with his family and loved ones were ruined – the final moments of Wakefield’s life were now bombarded by well-meaning well-wishers who might not have understood the situation.

All because of Curt Schilling’s big fat fucking mouth.

Although Wakefield’s #49 has never been issued to another player after Wakefield’s retirement in 2011, perhaps next season would be a good time for the Red Sox to officially retire Tim Wakefield’s number permanently. Two World Series rings, he pitched for more than 10 years with the Sox, and finished his career there. He surely deserves the honor.

And once that’s done, someone needs to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, find that bloody sock Curt Schilling wore when he pitched for Boston in the 2004 ALCS game against the New York Yankees … and pour a gallon of bleach on it.

Oh, and one more thing.

Fuck Curt Schilling all the way to hell.