This is an anniversary that will not, under any circumstances, be celebrated in the Hub. One year ago today, Tim Wakefield threw an 11th-inning knuckleball to Aaron Boone that never knuckled, and the rest is infamy.

"Please," said Joe Hoffman, a Cape Cod resident, as he leaned against a Fenway Park support beam, "don't remind us."

Game 7. American League Championship Series. Oct. 16, 2003. No need to labor on the details.

Everyone knows the Red Sox had a 5-2 lead after seven innings at Yankee Stadium, that former Boston manager Grady Little left starter Pedro Martinez in the game too long, that the Yankees rallied and tied the score and Boone put them in the World Series with a 6-5 victory.

It is still an open wound in New England, one the Yankees are pouring salt on with their current 2-0 series lead in the ALCS. People here have not forgotten. In the case of Little, they have not forgiven.

But the man who served up the gopher ball that Boone put into the left-field seats has not endured the same rough treatment as the culprits from other postseason collapses. Bill Buckner had to move as far away from Fenway as he could.

Wakefield still pitches here.

"He had a great series up until that point. I don't think anyone blamed him," said Bob Brown, a Wellesley, Mass., resident. "The game should have never gotten to that point.

"Look, people have had a love-hate relationship with Wakefield over the years. He's had some very good years and some not very good years. Now, he's the elder statesman on this team. People are aware that he's always done his best for this team."

Ironically, before the rain washed away Game 3 last night, Wakefield was scheduled to pitch today on the one-year anniversary of his ill-fated relief effort.

He came into the game in the 10th inning that night and retired the Yankees in order. Yankees closer Mariano Rivera shut down the Red Sox in the top of the 11th, but it was his third -- and likely last -- inning of relief. The Red Sox were a half-inning away from getting to a less reliable relief pitcher.

They never got there. Boone stepped to the plate and into history, and Wakefield walked off the mound, picked up his Red Sox jacket and went back into the clubhouse.

And cried.

Asked yesterday how long it took him to recover from that moment, the usually polite knuckleballer stiffened. "It's another year," he said. "We finished this year. That was last year and we're in the same situation as we were last year."

He was more candid with the Boston Globe in an interview in January, when he admitted he worried about suffering the same fate as Buckner, who let the ground ball trickle under his legs in the memorable Game 6 collapse at Shea Stadium.

"I was terrified that I would be remembered like Buckner," Wakefield told the Globe. "I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to show my face in Boston again. But I soon realized that wasn't close to being the case."

Instead, Wakefield received a warm ovation before and after his first start at Fenway Park this season, and an even bigger one when he defeated the Yankees, 6-2, in his first appearance against them since the Boone home run.

Wakefield has pitched 2,066 2/3 innings in his career, winning 128 games, including 114 for the Red Sox. He is one of the few pitchers in baseball history to master the quirky knuckleball, using his fingertips to reduce the spin on his pitches and make their path unpredictable to opposing batters.

In the past three seasons, Wakefield has mastered the Yankees like few pitchers have. He has faced them 13 times, including eight starts, and while his record is just 3-3, he has an impressive 2.82 ERA. The feared Yankees lineup is barely above the Mendoza Line, with a .202 batting average when Wakefield is on the mound.

The Red Sox fans -- some of the smartest in all of sports -- know his body of work is better than one bad pitch. Even if that pitch ended a chance to go to the World Series.

"He could have been the MVP of that series if things went the right way in that game," said Tom Campbell of Natick, Mass. "People have long memories around here."

In this case, that's not a bad thing.