FORT MYERS, Fla. -- The sight of David Wells and the absence
of Pedro Martinez put the Boston Red Sox spring training credo into
solid focus: 2004 was great, but this is a new season.
Wells reported to his new team Thursday and played catch with
Curt Schilling -- the new veterans atop the World Series champions'
rotation after Martinez signed with the New York Mets. Boston's
first official workout for pitchers and catchers is Friday.
"I want to go out on top and I'm not going to let anything stop
me," Wells said.
He picked the right team to do it with. The Red Sox won their
first championship since 1918 when they swept the St. Louis
Cardinals. That followed a victory over the New York Yankees in the
AL championship series after losing the first three games.
None of that will help them repeat.
"I'm very proud of what we did last year. Right now, I care
more about what we're going to do this year," manager Terry
Francona said. "I don't want for one minute to get lost what we
need to do in '05 because if we lose sight of that, what we did in
'04 isn't going to mean much for very long."
He knows teams will play more intensely to beat the champs and,
again, their main competition in the American League figures to be
the Yankees, who won the last seven AL East pennants while the Red
Sox finished second.
Wells, who left the Yankees to play with San Diego last season,
has started his adjustment to the other side of the Boston-New York
rivalry that has intensified since Trot Nixon said Tuesday that
Alex Rodriguez is not a "Yankee type."
And it might feel strange for a few days to wear a Red Sox
uniform instead of the Yankees pinstripes.
"I've been around long enough to put that aside," Wells said.
"I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of bad publicity about it from a
lot of people but I can't let that bother me. I can't look into
that too much. I have a job to do and I'm going to go out and do
everything I've been doing for the last 17 years."
Wells even tried to rejoin the Yankees. He called New York
general manager Brian Cashman after the season but was told the
team was going with youth.
"Then they turn around and sign Randy (Johnson), so what part
of that I didn't get I don't know," he said.
Wells joins a revamped rotation. The Red Sox signed Matt Clement
and Wade Miller as free agents and let Martinez and Derek Lowe
leave by free agency.
Schilling, traded by Arizona before last season, starts this
season as Boston's undisputed top starter. He was disappointed by
the way Martinez handled their last days as teammates.
"Pedro was one of those guys that was kind of like a sure
thing," Schilling said, then added that he enjoyed pitching with
Martinez more than Martinez did with him.
"I think that was pretty obvious at the end, not while it was
happening," Schilling said. "When you look at what he said
afterwards, it was obvious that it wasn't as fun of a thing for him
as it was for me.
"When the playoffs came and he made the comment about somebody
having to have a lot of guts to come up and tell him he wasn't
going to pitch Game 1, that kind of told me where we were at."
Schilling pitched poorly in that game against the Yankees, then
the Red Sox lost Game 2 with Martinez on the mound.
But that was last year.
On paper, Schilling said, the Yankees have the best rotation and
baseball's best pitcher, Johnson. They could face each other on
opening day in Yankee Stadium on April 3 if Schilling is ready
after offseason surgery on his right ankle.
In December, he said his recovery was behind the original
schedule and he might miss that game. He sounded more optimistic
Thursday.
"I think I've passed all of my big tests," Schilling said.
"Now I just have to guard against trying to catch up in three or
four days. ... Right now, it's just trying to get my mind around
being ready by April 3rd."
Spring training should run more smoothly with Francona and
Schilling entering their second seasons with the Red Sox. And the
players won't have the cloud of no championships since 1918 hanging
over their heads.
For a moment, though, it seemed to hover over general manager
Theo Epstein in the offseason when he watched parts of the 1975 and
1986 World Series on television. The Red Sox, of course, lost both.
"You remember where you were during the '86 World Series and
you start to feel that sadness creeping in," he said. "Then you
realize, well, we won this year and it kind of makes you feel
good."
For a while, anyway.
"The slate's clean for every team," Francona said, "so it's
just kind of common sense that what you did last year is not going
to mean squat to very many teams out there."