While the Red Sox have kept almost all details under wraps, April 9 promises to be an emotional day. Chairman Tom Werner made it a point to mention the date at Winter Weekend. By some twist of fate, the home opener falls on 4/9 this year. As in 49, the number Tim Wakefield wore for his entire 19-year career, including the last 17 seasons on the 1995-2011 Red Sox.

The 2024 schedule had already been set when Wakefield passed away suddenly on the final day of the 2023 season. He’d been diagnosed with brain cancer only months earlier, and his condition was made public — against his wishes — only the week before.

A committed philanthropist and dedicated member of the organization as a player and broadcaster, Wakefield remains beloved in Boston. It’s especially unfair, almost cruel, that Boston is about to spend a year reminiscing about and feting the 2004 team when he can’t be among them. Several of his teammates feel unprepared for what’s to come, Derek Lowe and Kevin Millar told the Herald recently. For many, his death still doesn’t feel real.

“It’s always gonna be tough,” Lowe said before participating in an annual charity golf tournament that he and Wakefield used to attend together.

“First time I’ve had to deal with losing a teammate,” added Millar. “But this was like a family member, obviously. … We were a unique team as far as the brotherhood that we had. Besides winning a World Series, I think, you know, the nucleus of us are all in touch … no matter what, you’re family for life.”

Lowe and Wakefield became teammates in 1997, when the Seattle Mariners traded the rookie Lowe and a catching prospect named Jason Varitek to the Red Sox in exchange for Heathcliff Slocumb. Lowe and Millar were teammates for only two seasons. But the seasons were 2003 and ’04, one of the most pivotal stretches in franchise history.

The 2004 team won the club’s first World Series since 1918. In order to do so, they had to overcome the Yankees, who’d taken a 3-0 lead in the penultimate round. As the person who surrendered the walk-off home run to Aaron Boone in Game 7 of the ALCS the year before, Wakefield suffered a unique kind of pain. But in ’04, he was instrumental in Boston’s historic upset of its most hated rivals, the ultimate revenge and redemption.

No team had ever come back from such a deficit to win a best-of-seven series before, to say nothing of the championship drought that had been hanging over Boston’s head for 86 years. That’s the kind of gantlet run that bonds people for life. However, according to Millar, they didn’t succeed where previous Red Sox teams had failed because they were the most talented; they were simply the right group of people coming together at the right time.

“We were not the best players, we were the best team,” he said.

However, Millar’s fondest memory of Wakefield has nothing to do with baseball.

“People talk about his knuckleball and his 75 mph fastball, but I’m gonna tell you, he was a great guitar player,” Millar recalled. “He would play guitar in my room during my 1-for-20s, when I was trying to get lucky, to get a hit. Wakefield was a tremendous guitar player. ‘Nothing Else Matters’ by Metallica. I remember him sitting on my dresser, we would put a little dip in, and basically, he would play guitar.”

“And those were the days and the times that you miss,” he continued. “It’s not so much the ground ball to shortstop or the pop-up to the pitcher, but you miss that camaraderie, and that boys club that you had and that brotherhood. I want everybody to know that this dude, he could’ve played in a band if he wanted to, but he chose to throw knuckleballs for 25 years.”

“He was a tremendous teammate,” Lowe said. “A great ambassador for the Red Sox. He’s sorely missed … we’d always laugh together. He’d sit there with his nerdy glasses and talk to everybody. He truly was a good friend. He really cared.”

No one’s quite sure how the Red Sox will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the season that changed everything. There will be hugs, tears, laughter, heartache and probably some drinking.

“Some Jack Daniels drank, and just some hugs, and a lot of gray hairs,” he said with a chuckle.

“I imagine we’ll all get together at some point in Fenway and reminisce,” said Lowe, with the voice of someone already reminiscing. “Boy, does time fly by. I can remember so much about that series, and it’s 20 years ago.”

They know nothing will bring their teammate back, either, but they know exactly how to honor him.

“Live every day like it’s our last,” Millar said, “and be thankful for the time that we had and the memories that we have forever.”