From first pitch, knuckleballer was in command

Got to bury the needle on the Gush-O-Meter.

“I think it’s appropriate to say he can gush over this one all he wants,’’ Farrell declared. “I don’t know if there are enough words to say what he did tonight.’’

“I don’t know how he did it,’’ added Francona. “That was more than you could possibly expect.’’

Quite obviously, David Ortiz had to be in the headlines for his two homers, the second being his first walkoff of 2009. That blow gave the Red Sox a 3-2 win and made a winner out of Daniel Bard, who was awesomely unhittable in relief, fanning three of the four men he faced, including the menacing Jim Thome with the tying run perched on third base in the eighth.

But the fact is that in a better world the winning pitcher would have been Wakefield, who handed a 2-1 lead to Ramon Ramirez, only to see his replacement give up a pinch-hit homer over the Red Sox bullpen to Scott Podsednik, the first man he saw. That blow cost Wake a chance to record victory No. 12, but it did nothing to erase the memories of how well he had pitched.

Wakefield had prepped for his major league comeback with a pair of rehab starts, most notably an outing in Pawtucket in which he went 5 2/3 innings, surrendering one run (a homer). But no one could come up with any explanation for Wakefield’s phenomenal command last night, which included throwing a sick 17 consecutive strikes (and 27 of his first 30 pitches), and all this with a knuckleball!

“I had better command than I did in Pawtucket, obviously, throwing a lot of strikes with a lot of movement,’’ said Wakefield.

The only run off him came in the first, when Gordon Beckham, the game’s second batter, reached on a swinging bunt down the third base line, and Paul Konerko smashed an 0-and-2 pitch to the triangle for a triple.

Fielding had been the big concern for Wakefield, whose issue had been sciatica-induced pain in his left calf. And this being baseball, the game found him very quickly. First there was the Beckham play, and that was followed by another dribbler off the bat of A.J. Pierzynski, which resulted in an extraordinarily rare 3-4 putout at first base.