transition to college and the challenge of winning a starting position were both far more difficult than Wakefield had imagined, and so between the fall and spring semesters he did something he never imagined himself doing. He quit the baseball team.
Wakefield's inability to cope undoubtedly was a reflection of his immaturity at that stage of his life as much as it was a comment on
Rosseau, whom Wakefield would later come to respect. In retrospect, he would see that he had made a mistake.
It just didn't work out. I was immature. Those kinds of things happen.
After remaining at BCC as a student for the balance of his freshman year, Wakefield resumed playing baseball for an assortment of select teams in the Melbourne area, including a team in a summer league for 16- to 18-year-olds. His decision to leave the BCC team had reached Hall, the same man who had coached Rosseau years earlier and who happened to be friendly with Steve Wakefield. Hall was the head coach at the Florida Institute of Technologyâknown today as Florida Techâa school that played its games in the Sunshine State Conference, then regarded as one of the better Division 2 baseball conferences in the country.
Through his wife, who had been a teacher at Melbourne High School, Hall knew of Steve Wakefield's standing as a track athlete in local history, and he certainly knew of Tim Wakefield's baseball career at Eau Gallie. Hall initially had not spent a great deal of time trying to recruit Wakefield out of high school because he felt he had little opportunity of securing him; Wakefield's long-term goal at the time had been to transfer to a bigger Division 1 program, and Hall thought he would have seemed like a misfit among a collection of Florida Tech players who were students first and athletes second.
"Back then, Florida Tech was known for its engineering program," Hall, 74, said in the fall of 2010. "The [students there] wanted to be engineers. They didn't want to be baseball players.
"Tim wasn't really a pitcher then. He was a position player, and he was very good. He was a natural athlete. He could play all kinds of sports."
Florida Tech offered Wakefield a number of possibilities, all of them attractive. Because he had never played in a game at BCC, Wakefield could make the jump without using a year of his athletic eligibility, effectively becoming a
redshirt
freshman in the fall of 1985. (Though a sophomore under academic guidelines, he would qualify as a freshman athletically and still possess four years of eligibility.) Wakefield would get a better education at Florida Tech, he could still be close
to home, and there remained the possibility that if he blossomed, he could transfer to a bigger program where he might be able to advance his playing career.
And finally, at a place like Florida Tech, Wakefield could effectively start right away to get the playing time he needed to develop.
This is more my speed.
Hall, for his part, knew that Wakefield could excel at Division 2, and Wakefield took very little time to prove him right. Wakefield's addition to the team had an immediate and profound impact on the performance of the Florida Tech squad: the school's program went, in the words of the coach, "from mediocre to very good" almost overnight. In the spring of 1986, Wakefield still had yet to mature physically, but he was so eager and willing to do whatever Hall asked that he fit in immediately.
"His first year at Florida Tech, we were short of pitchers at one point," Hall recalled. "We were playing a national schedule, and it was a nonconference game, so I was looking for options. We needed to save our pitching [for more important games], so he volunteered to pitch. He was throwing in the bullpen, and he threw a knuckleball, and the kid who was catching him couldn't handle it. I remember him looking at Tim and saying, 'I don't think we should use that pitch, it's not very good.'"
In fact, though relatively no one recognized it at the
Wakefield's inability to cope undoubtedly was a reflection of his immaturity at that stage of his life as much as it was a comment on
Rosseau, whom Wakefield would later come to respect. In retrospect, he would see that he had made a mistake.
It just didn't work out. I was immature. Those kinds of things happen.
After remaining at BCC as a student for the balance of his freshman year, Wakefield resumed playing baseball for an assortment of select teams in the Melbourne area, including a team in a summer league for 16- to 18-year-olds. His decision to leave the BCC team had reached Hall, the same man who had coached Rosseau years earlier and who happened to be friendly with Steve Wakefield. Hall was the head coach at the Florida Institute of Technologyâknown today as Florida Techâa school that played its games in the Sunshine State Conference, then regarded as one of the better Division 2 baseball conferences in the country.
Through his wife, who had been a teacher at Melbourne High School, Hall knew of Steve Wakefield's standing as a track athlete in local history, and he certainly knew of Tim Wakefield's baseball career at Eau Gallie. Hall initially had not spent a great deal of time trying to recruit Wakefield out of high school because he felt he had little opportunity of securing him; Wakefield's long-term goal at the time had been to transfer to a bigger Division 1 program, and Hall thought he would have seemed like a misfit among a collection of Florida Tech players who were students first and athletes second.
"Back then, Florida Tech was known for its engineering program," Hall, 74, said in the fall of 2010. "The [students there] wanted to be engineers. They didn't want to be baseball players.
"Tim wasn't really a pitcher then. He was a position player, and he was very good. He was a natural athlete. He could play all kinds of sports."
Florida Tech offered Wakefield a number of possibilities, all of them attractive. Because he had never played in a game at BCC, Wakefield could make the jump without using a year of his athletic eligibility, effectively becoming a
redshirt
freshman in the fall of 1985. (Though a sophomore under academic guidelines, he would qualify as a freshman athletically and still possess four years of eligibility.) Wakefield would get a better education at Florida Tech, he could still be close
to home, and there remained the possibility that if he blossomed, he could transfer to a bigger program where he might be able to advance his playing career.
And finally, at a place like Florida Tech, Wakefield could effectively start right away to get the playing time he needed to develop.
This is more my speed.
Hall, for his part, knew that Wakefield could excel at Division 2, and Wakefield took very little time to prove him right. Wakefield's addition to the team had an immediate and profound impact on the performance of the Florida Tech squad: the school's program went, in the words of the coach, "from mediocre to very good" almost overnight. In the spring of 1986, Wakefield still had yet to mature physically, but he was so eager and willing to do whatever Hall asked that he fit in immediately.
"His first year at Florida Tech, we were short of pitchers at one point," Hall recalled. "We were playing a national schedule, and it was a nonconference game, so I was looking for options. We needed to save our pitching [for more important games], so he volunteered to pitch. He was throwing in the bullpen, and he threw a knuckleball, and the kid who was catching him couldn't handle it. I remember him looking at Tim and saying, 'I don't think we should use that pitch, it's not very good.'"
In fact, though relatively no one recognized it at the