Wakefield has contributed to the communities of Boston and Melbourne, Fla., (his hometown) throughout his professional career.
In 1998, he started the “Wakefield Warriors” program to help bring patients from the Jimmy Fund and the Franciscan Hospital for Children in Boston to Red Sox games. For the last 17 years, he has hosted the Annual Tim Wakefield Celebrity Golf Classic in Melbourne to benefit the Space Coast Early Intervention Center.
Wakefield will become the third Red Sox player to win the award, following Mo Vaughn in 1996 and Curt Schilling in 2005.