The Boston Red Sox say announcer and former knuckleballer Tim Wakefield is undergoing treatment for a disease they did not specify and asked for fans to respect his privacy after his illness was outed without consent by ex-teammate Curt Schilling.
The team released a statement Thursday afternoon confirming that Wakefield and his wife Stacy are both fighting illness.
The statement stopped short of revealing what specific health problems they're facing, but said it was "a deeply personal matter they intended to keep private as they navigate treatment and work to tackle this disease."
The Red Sox put out their statement after Wakefield's former teammate, Curt Schilling, revealed on his podcast and apparently without their approval that both had cancer.
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The team confirmed the information was shared without their permission.
Their statement goes on to say that both Tim and Stacy appreciate the support but are asking for privacy at this time.
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Wakefield, 57, retired in 2012 with a 200-192 record and 4.41 ERA in more than 3,000 major league innings. He was a part of Boston’s 2004 and ’07 World Series championships and was inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame in 2016.
He has worked for NESN, the Red Sox broadcast network, since 2012 and remained active in Boston charities, including the Red Sox Foundation.
Schilling, who was Wakefield’s teammate from 2004-07, retired in 2009. He worked as an ESPN analyst before he was fired in 2016 for anti-transgender social media posts. Other posts have expressed support for lynching journalists and the Jan. 6 insurrection. His video game company, 38 Studios, went bankrupt and defaulted on a $75 million loan from the state of Rhode Island.
Schilling was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 and later said it was in remission. He was enshrined in the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2012, but he fell short of induction in the national baseball hall in 2022, his final year of eligibility, garnering 58.6% of the vote — far short of the 75% needed.
