Even here, on the blessed training ground of the reigning world champions, there is a cost of doing business. The Red Sox make decisions that are hard and shrewd and devoid of all emotion, and they are more interested in handing out championship rings than gold watches.

Tim Wakefield is beginning his 11th season with the Red Sox, but he is eligible for free agency at the end of this year. With 10 victories this season, Wakefield can finish with the third-highest win total in the distinguished history of the franchise. The only men in front of him will be Cy Young and Roger Clemens, one man for whom pitching's most prestigious award is named and another who has won that honor a record seven times.

"I've been fortunate to be here for a long time," said Wakefield, whose 114 career Sox victories currently place him behind Young and Clemens (192 each), Mel Parnell (123), Luis Tiant (122), Smokey Joe Wood (117), Pedro Martinez [stats, news] (117) and Bob Stanley (115).

"Pedro got his in seven years and it took me 10," Wakefield continued. "I was in the bullpen for four years, too, so that slowed me down a little bit - thanks to Joe Kerrigan."

Digs at his former pitching coach aside, Wakefield now is in what has become familiar territory for those who wear the Red Sox uniform. Wakefield will earn $4.67 million this year in the final installment of a three-year contract, then file for free agency at the end of the year.

Wakefield always has made it clear he would prefer to finish his career in Boston - the Sox have said the same about him - but there currently seems little chance of him securing a new deal before November.

A surprise? Hardly. A year ago at this time, the Red Sox entered spring training with Nomar Garciaparra, Martinez, Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek entering the final year of their contracts, and the Sox signed none of them before Opening Day. The new-age ownership and management of the Red Sox now run this team as a corporation and treat the players as commodities, and that is simply good, sound business.

On the whole, the players get treated well while they are here.

And when they depart, the Sox pop someone else into the jersey as if they were changing bulbs on a strand of Christmas lights.

Until recently, of course, it never used to work that way here. The Red Sox went from Ted Williams to Carl Yastrzemski to Jim Rice to Clemens, degrees of separation that connected 1939 to 1996. Then Clemens hit the road and Mo Vaughn followed, and at the trading deadline last season, Garciaparra was traded away by a 30-year-old general manager who grew up in the shadows of Fenway Park.

During that brief span of time, the Red Sox went from a locally owned business to a corporate machine, a change that was both necessary and inevitable. Sox management has performed miracles with Fenway Park and brought Boston baseball into the 21st century, producing more spin-off ventures than ``All in the Family.''

Still, it is difficult to think that we have not lost at least a little bit of something here. Among current Red Sox players, Wakefield is the team leader in continuous service time. Wakefield looks to be in great shape - he resumed the training regimen he employed before 2002 and 2003, when he was a combined 22-12 with a 3.52 ERA - and he has accepted pitching out of the rotation or bullpen, the latter where he could end up again at some point this season.

Along the way, we can honestly say we got to know him, and opportunities of the like are becoming more and more rare.

"It's kind of weird to think back to '95 when I got released (by the Cleveland Indians)," Wakefield said. "Now, to hear my name mentioned with Pedro, Cy Young and Clemens is kind of weird to me."

Like them, he could be gone soon.

In this age of professional sports, that simply is the cost of doing business.