On Pedro's night, Beckett's impact noticeable

All of the attention was focused on superstar Pedro Martínez's every move. How he strolled out from the bullpen. How he threw to friends David Ortiz and Manny Ramírez. How he hit Mark Loretta with a pitch. How the fans cheered him. How he was pummeled for eight runs in three innings in his Fenway return.

Sometimes it's nice to be the ``other" pitcher.

Josh Beckett could have crawled out to the mound on his hands and knees, or descended from the sky on a parachute and gone largely unnoticed because viewers were likely peering into the Mets' dugout to see if they could read the frustration on Pedro's face or the concern after the Sox piled on with four runs in the first and four more in the third.

Once Martínez departed, however, there was a sudden interest in Beckett. It manifested itself with two outs in the eighth inning. After allowing two earned runs and five hits, Beckett, all 6 feet 5 inches, 222 pounds of him, walked off to a standing ovation from a crowd exuberant that their new guy had defeated their old guy.

It was almost a symbolic changing of the guard, and of allegiances, from one great pitcher who was very much appreciated and never to be forgotten, to the new guy fans appear to be appreciating more and more.

Beckett, who doffed his cap in acknowledgement of the ovation, didn't have to pitch like Bob Gibson after being staked to an 8-0 lead after three innings. All he had to do was challenge the hitters with his live fastball and biting changeup and make sure he didn't give up too much of the lead.

``Yes we're definitely going to try to pound the strike zone more, just like that at-bat to [Carlos] Beltran [in the sixth inning]," he said. ``Here I am, I have four different pitches in my repertoire, and I just kept throwing the same one. . . . I throw the highest probable pitch that I can throw for a strike."

All he needed to do was be Josh Beckett. That the team is 11-5 when he pitches is proof that his teammates like his style, his pace, his competitiveness. There's great promise now that between 26-year-old Beckett and 22-year-old lefthander Jon Lester and the older guys -- Curt Schilling and Tim Wakefield -- the Sox' rotation is starting to become compelling.

In his Beckett's last three starts against three NL East teams (Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York), he has gone 3-0 with a 2.49 ERA. His only blemishes last night were solo homers by Carlos Delgado in the fourth and Jose Valentin in the seventh.

He has worked on throwing a softer changeup so there's more separation between his fastball. He says he's constantly making adjustments to stay one step ahead of the hitters, changing patterns, throwing pitches in different ways from different angles, trying to foil the opposing team's scouting reports.

He's winning the battle.

While he claimed he wasn't obsessed with facing Martínez, he did notice the standing ovations and wondered if they weren't more amorous than the one he received. Yet, he appreciated it nonetheless, acknowledging that he understands the history between the Sox and Martínez.

``I have the utmost respect for [Martínez]," said Beckett as he iced his right elbow during a postgame press conference. ``Just watching him pitch last year, pitching against him. He is phenomenal. He has kind of reinvented himself. He is not in the 97-98-mile-per-hour range anymore. Guys come back to the dugout and say, `Man that guy really knows how to pitch.' I can't imagine how good he was when he threw 97-98. He's Pedro Martínez. Probably a Hall-of-Famer."

Roger Clemens returned as a Blue Jay in 1997 and struck out 16 Red Sox in an amazing performance. Conversely, Martínez came in and got whacked like a piñata.

``I'm not surprised by anything we do anymore," Beckett said. ``Any time you have David Ortiz and Manny Ramírez in the middle of your lineup. . . . If we get both of those guys to the plate in a given inning, more than likely we are going to score a run. Well, they are going to get four or five at-bats a night, so that's four runs that we are going to score almost every night.

``You do that with Curt Schilling and Wakefield and all those guys, you're going to win a lot of games."

Beckett won 15 games last season and he's already up to 10 wins with June not quite over. With all of the hype surrounding him and the success of those (Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez) who were traded to Florida for Beckett and Mike Lowell, people forget sometimes that Beckett is still an emerging pitcher, who has yet to pitch 200 innings in a season.

After last night's performance, he was almost halfway there -- 97 innings, in which he's allowed 83 hits (and 20 home runs). He's now lowered his ERA to 4.64.

And last night maybe he had to stomp his feet to get himself noticed. He did it by retiring the first seven batters and 11 of the first 12. He did it by hitting his former catcher, Paul Lo Duca with a pitch in the sixth, some four innings after Martínez had drilled Loretta.

He did it in a much-hyped pitching showdown that really never came off.

On a night when Sox fans wanted to celebrate Martínez, they seemed satisfied to turn the page. Their new guy didn't let them down.