Former Red Sox Pitcher Mike Timlin to Participate in Pan-Mass Challenge This Summer

Former Red Sox pitcher Mike Timlin and his wife are riding across Massachusetts this summer in the Pan-Mass Challenge, a cross-state fundraising event. The Timlins will ride to honor the memory of friend and teammate Tim Wakefield, who died in 2023 of brain cancer. 

Timlin and Wakefield were part of the Red Sox team when the Sox fell to the New York Yankees in the 2003 American League Championship Series. The Red Sox came back the following season for the win, ending the franchise's 86-year championship drought. Both Timlin and Wakefield pitched into their 40s. Wakefield was famous for his knuckleball, which cemented him as the third-winningest pitcher in Red Sox history.

Both Wakefield and his wife, Stacy, died of cancer in 2023.

According to a Boston.com report, the Pan-Mass Challenge is the largest single-event athletic fundraiser in the country. It has raised more than $1 billion for cancer treatment and research since 1980. Many of its participants dedicate their involvment to friends and family who have died of cancer.

Created in 1980 by Billy Starr, who founded the event after his mother's death from cancer, the PMC is a one- and two-day bike ride of up to 186 miles that now includes 15 different routes across Massachusetts. Many riders conclude their excursion in Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod. 

This August, approximately 7,000 people will mount their bikes and ride to raise $76 million for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, one of the country's premier cancer research and treatment facilities.

“We've all seen it. We've all been touched by it … it's awful. And knowing that one of my buddies had had to go through that, and his wife had to go through it … it kind of drives me to do this,” Timlin said in a Boston.com interview. “You don't want to see someone else's family go through the tragedy. And if you can prevent that, even in a small way, then do so.”