Champs proud of past but focus on new season

— -- 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."