Tim Wakefield has logged so many seasons with the Red Sox that you've got to be past your college years to understand and appreciate what this man accomplished during a two-month stretch in 1995.

Acquired from the Triple-A trash heap by former general manager Dan Duquette, Wakefield jumped out to a 14-1 start with the surprising '95 Red Sox. He pitched superbly and won. He pitched so-so and won. There may have been a couple of bow-wows in there, too, and he won those.

Even Wakefield is a little fuzzy about the specifics, other than that the wins sure seemed to pile up.

Now we have an older, wiser Wakefield, a mainstay from a different era in Red Sox history - he was in the same starting rotation with Roger Clemens and the immortal Zane Smith, for cry-eye - who is still going out there every fifth day and aiming those dipsy-doo knuckleballs of his at opposing hitters.

And surely there is this thought clanging around in the heads of many Red Sox fans: Could Tim Wakefield, at this stage of the game, reclaim a piece of the past and go on another of those dazzling runs?

It says here that he can.

True, Wakefield was the pitcher of record in the Sox' 3-1 loss to the Yankees yesterday afternoon in the Bronx. The story lines were that the Bombers' losing streak ended at seven games, that lefty Kei Igawa did a superb job in relief after a Julio Lugo liner knocked starter Jeff Karstens out of the game, and that Coco Crisp was ejected from the game after squawking with plate umpire Bruce Froemming over a third-strike call.

A quick word about Crisp: I don't care if the pitch was three feet outside the zone, he shouldn't be getting tossed from the eighth inning of a two-run game against the Yankees, especially after missing a bunch of games with an oblique injury. And Sox manager Terry Francona and DH David Ortiz shouldn't be enabling Crisp by talking about the call in the fashion that they did after the game.

But I digress.

Wakefield, while hardly brilliant yesterday, nonetheless gave the Red Sox the kind of gutty pitching that, in the end, comes back to reward a guy. He gave up three runs in 5 1/3 innings - two of them on a home run by Jorge Posada - and he also issued six walks. But he also pitched himself out of all kinds of messes, and, for what it's worth, Posada hit a pitch so far inside that even Wakefield thought the ball was going to hook foul.

"I reviewed it on tape, and that ball was so far inside that Dougie (Mirabelli) was diving for it,'' said Wakefield. "It was almost behind him. It's one of those things where you just have to tip your cap to him.''

Put it all together, and in five starts this season Wakefield is 2-3 with a 2.59 ERA.

Stop me, stop anybody, if you've heard this before, but here goes: With a little run support, Wakefield could be . . .

"The only thing I can control is to try and get outs,'' he said. "They got a great lineup going up there, and unfortunately it was runners on base all day. I like to pitch a clean inning once in a while, but it didn't happen today. But I walk away from this positively, feeling I was able to make the pitches when I needed to make the pitches.''

Wakefield is a little lost on this team in terms of being a megastar. He doesn't have a bloody sock or a blog, as does Curt Schilling. He doesn't have his own private media horde, as does Daisuke Matsuzaka. He isn't a hometown pinup boy, as is Jonathan Papelbon.

But he knows what it's like to be a big, big winner. And he has given us hints this season than he can be that pitcher again.