He works for the Texas Rangers, as executive director to the president. But if there was one person in Ameriquest Field last night sympathetic to the travails of Josh Bard, the Red Sox catcher whose debut as Tim Wakefield's new caddie resulted in three passed balls and a 10-4 beating by the Rangers, it was Jim Sundberg.

Sundberg won six Gold Gloves catching for the Rangers. He figures he probably would have won three more if they had never traded for knuckleballer Charlie Hough. Before Hough arrived, Sundberg had maybe three to five passed balls a season. That number jumped to 18 with Hough.

"There were probably a half-dozen to a dozen times that I popped up in bed sweating, waking up my wife, too," said Sundberg. "I was dreaming that I was catching Charlie and I didn't have a mask on, and his knuckleball hit me in the face.

"It's not an easy deal. I didn't like it, I didn't want to do it, I didn't look forward to doing it."

Josh Bard is 28 years old. He has appeared in a total of 156 games in the big leagues, only 41 in the previous two seasons combined for the Cleveland Indians. Until he arrived in spring training with the Red Sox, he'd never set up behind the plate to catch a knuckleball.

Last night, it showed.

"It's not him, it's me," Wakefield said after giving up seven runs in 3 2/3 innings. "The judgment should fall on me. His job is to catch it, and he does a great job doing that. So it's definitely not his fault."

Sundberg no doubt would have agreed.

"You don't catch it," Sundberg said. "You sort of wrestle it to the ground and try to keep it in front of you. You creep as close to the plate as you can, because the knuckler tends to break late. You try to center the pitch, so that if you miss it, it hits you in the chest.

"You can't panic and you've got to stay relaxed. You even breathe differently, whatever you can do to relax your hands and arm, because when you catch a knuckleball, your hands and arm tend to tighten up, because of the amount of anxiety involved. I'd sometimes wiggle my wrists or even wiggle the fingers in my glove, trying to find some way to cut the tension."

Last night was the first time in four years that Doug Mirabellii wasn't around to catch Wakefield; in those four years, the only other catcher called upon to chase his knuckler was Jason Varitek.

What was it like to be Tim Wakefield last night?

"You know, if Timmy was 25, it would be difficult for him," said Hough, who was sanding a cabinet back home in Southern California but was happy to take a phone call to discuss a pitcher he has mentored a few times over the years.

"But Timmy's 39 now. He's a veteran now, a playoff and World Series hero, all that stuff. He can handle it."

And so will Bard, Hough predicted.

"If he goes into it not worrying about his personal statistics, he'll probably do a good job," said Hough. "If he just tries to do the best he can, and not worry about passed balls and getting three hits, at the end of the night he's probably going to shake somebody's hand after a win."

Hough, who considers the Dodgers' Steve Yeager the best catcher he ever saw, thought Sundberg actually did a pretty good job of catching him. "I just think I wore him out for the next night."

Hough became fond of throwing to Geno Petralli with Texas.

"Geno's only chance at that point to stick in the big leagues with us was to catch me," Hough said. "It was a situation where they wanted somebody to catch me and I said, `How about the guy catching me in the bullpen?' He took it as a last chance to get in our lineup and play. He did pretty well."

Bard, who sat behind All-Star Victor Martinez in Cleveland and had just 83 at-bats all last season, welcomed a move to Boston for much the same reason.

"I looked at Victor and I said, `This isn't lightening up any time soon,' " Bard said the other day. "To know you're going to play every five days and make some spot starts when [Varitek] needs a day off, that's an exciting thing."

John Blake, the Sox' new PR man, was with the Rangers the day Petralli had six passed balls in a Hough-pitched game in 1987, tying a big-league record. Four of those passed balls came in one inning, also a record.

Three batters into the game last night, Bard had his first passed ball, the first pitch to Mark Teixeira dipping sharply toward the batter and off Bard's glove. The second passed ball came on an 0-and-1 pitch to the eighth batter of the first inning, Rod Barajas. In between, Bard darted out from behind the plate to block what would have been a certain wild pitch.

The third passed ball came in the second inning, on what would have been an inning-ending third strike to Kevin Mench.

"I never had a guy where they said, `You can't pitch to him,' " Hough said. "To tell you the truth, I never worried about it. I figured if I threw a good enough knuckleball and the catcher couldn't catch it, they wouldn't take me out, they'd change catchers.

"The only guy I really felt bad for was Rich Gedman. Geddy had to catch me in the '86 All-Star Game. It was a tight game, he'd never caught a knuckleballer. He ran down in the bullpen and caught a couple from me."

Hough struck out three batters, but each time Gedman dropped the third strike. Two of the batters reached on the passed balls. Hough consoled the Sox catcher after the game.

"He felt bad, he really did," Hough said. "I was being taken out of the All-Star Game after striking out the side."

No, Bard said the other day, he didn't find himself awakened in the middle of night, terrorized by visions of Wakefield's knuckler.

"I've come to the reality that I've prepared myself the best I can," he said. "There are times you're going to miss it, there are going to be times you feel you should miss it and you're going to catch it. All I can do is do the best I can."