The Red Sox pitcher doesn’t have time to look back at last season.

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) – Johnny Pesky, the former Boston shortstop and manager who knows too well how merciless Red Sox fans can be, thinks he knows why the city has spared pitcher Tim Wakefield from the offseason sport of finger-pointing that claimed Grady Little’s job.

“Let me tell you something about young Mr. Wakefield,” Pesky said Monday at the team’s spring training field. “He’s a classy professional. He’ll accept responsibility when things go wrong. The guys like him, and they’re not blaming him for what happened.”

Mention “Bill Buckner” in Boston and you will likely get an earful about curses. Saying “Bucky Dent” will get you the curses themselves. Talk about Little and a Red Sox fan is as likely to burst into tears as rage.

But it was Wakefield who gave up Aaron Boone’s game-winning home run that kept the Red Sox from making the World Series last year. So when the knuckleballer took the podium in front of 1,200 fans this winter at an award dinner, he wasn’t sure what to expect.

“It was huge,” he said last week of the standing ovation he got from the packed ballroom at the Boston Baseball Writer’s annual dinner. “It shows you the character of our fans, and the passion of our fans. It gives me chills.”

The Red Sox were five outs from reaching the World Series last season before Pedro Martinez tired, Little failed to do anything about it and the New York Yankees rallied from a three-run deficit to send Game 7 of the AL championship series into extra innings.

Wakefield pitched a perfect 10th inning, then Boone hit the first pitch of the 11th for the game-winning homer.

“The fact that he was put there shows you what the ballclub thinks of him,” current manager Terry Francona said. “Guys like him make my job so easy. They just show up and they do their best. Win or lose, they show up again the next day and try to do it again.”

New York advanced to the World Series, and the Red Sox returned to Boston for another offseason of parceling out the blame. Little was let go, and most of the winter was spent rethinking his decision to leave Martinez in the game.

“It’s unfortunate what happened last year,” Wakefield said. “But that was a good season. They beat us. I don’t really think you can put a finger on what went wrong. That’s what baseball’s all about.”

The longest-tenured player on the Red Sox, Wakefield has become a well-respected leader in the clubhouse. He has bounced in and out of the rotation and suffered career setbacks and organizational insults – like being left off the 1999 playoff roster – without becoming discouraged or malcontented.

Asked if he needed to have a talk with Wakefield this spring to make sure his confidence wasn’t damaged, Francona said, “Truthfully, I never gave it a thought. Didn’t think I had to.

“He’s about as much as a pro as you’re going to find,” the manager said. “No, I haven’t given it a thought. He probably hasn’t either.”

It turns out, Wakefield did think about it – but only for a couple of days.

“It stinks getting on the bus and knowing we’re through,” he said. “But you start to reflect on it and think, ‘Wow, we were part of one of the greatest series ever.”‘

Pesky has a little bit of experience with the fickle nature of Boston fans. For years, he was blamed for “holding” a relay throw in the 1946 World Series that allowed Enos Slaughter’s mad dash to home plate with the deciding run in Game 7.

Pesky didn’t really hold the ball, but that hasn’t been enough to keep the legend from growing all these years. In Red Sox lore, the play is part of a timeline that runs from the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees to Dent’s homer to Buckner’s error to Little’s lonely walk back to the dugout.

“Timmy felt bad about it,” Pesky said. “He’s the guy that felt worse about it than anybody.”

Wakefield’s goal has gone from making the majors, to pitching 10 years, to pitching past the age of 40, a reasonable plan for a 37-year-old knuckleballer. Of course, there’s the possibility that he will keep going and surpass his mentor, Phil Niekro, who pitched until he was 48, or Hall of Fame knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhem, who turned 50 in 1972, his last season.

“I probably could, but I don’t think there’s any reason to play that long,” Wakefield said. “Unless we haven’t won a World Series.”

The way things have been going for the Red Sox the last eight or nine decades, that’s a reasonable concern.

AP-ES-03-29-04 1747EST