Martinez Is Likely Finished for Season

Boston’s Pedro Martinez won’t start again this season unless the Red Sox get back in playoff contention.

Martinez said he has a slightly torn right rotator cuff. Since he was activated from the disabled list Aug. 26 after being sidelined two months, Martinez has allowed five runs and 12 hits in 13 innings.

“Talking with him yesterday, he said if this was a playoff scenario, he could still pitch,” Manager Joe Kerrigan said.

Kerrigan wouldn’t say outright that Martinez wouldn’t pitch again this year.

“I think that would be sending the wrong message to our team if we did that, saying our season’s over, that we have no chance at all,” Kerrigan said.

But he said Martinez would pitch again this year only if the Red Sox draw within two or three games of a playoff berth going into the final week of the season.

On another front, Kerrigan removed first baseman Izzy Alcantara from Sunday’s game against the Yankees for not hustling on a fourth-inning pop-up in front of the plate.

“He understands and he apologized to me,” Kerrigan said of Alcantara. “I won’t take disrespecting the game. I won’t take it in the clubhouse and I won’t take it on the field.”

Alcantara was told by Martinez not to comment.

Outfielder Dante Bichette believed Kerrigan’s move was a reaction to the team’s losing.

“He wanted to make a statement to Izzy and-or the whole club,” Bichette said.

No one has gone 20-1, not Cy Young, not Bob Gibson, not Christy Mathewson.

Roger Clemens has the chance tonight to gain a unique place in baseball history, a spot just short of perfection but well ahead of amazing.

“He’s really put on a show,” Yankee Manager Joe Torre said. “It’s impressive for anybody. For a guy who’s 39 years old and a power pitcher and probably on the way to his sixth Cy Young, it’s a remarkable achievement.”

Clemens, who doesn’t talk on the day before his starts, was nowhere to be seen in the clubhouse. A grayish-brown picture of Rube Marquard, who in 1912 became the only other pitcher to reach 19-1, was taped in Clemens’ locker.

Already a five-time 20-game winner, Clemens has a chance to do it again against the Boston Red Sox, his team during his first 13 years in the majors.

When Clemens left the Red Sox after the 1996 season, Boston General Manager Dan Duquette called him a pitcher in the “twilight” of his career.

Since then, Clemens is 87-32.

Clemens probably has four starts left in the regular season and if he doesn’t lose, he’ll break the record for winning percentage, set when Roy Face finished 18-1 (.947) for Pittsburgh in 1959.

The fans who cheered Cal Ripken Jr.’s home run in his final All-Star game this summer showed the retiring Baltimore Oriole third baseman their appreciation again Sunday.

Ripken was honored by a sellout crowd before the Orioles played Seattle at Safeco Field. Mariner Manager Lou Piniella presented Ripken with a white Seattle jersey with a No. 8 signed by the Mariners.

Each Seattle player shook Ripken’s hand and the fans gave him a long standing ovation. A plaque in his honor was hung in the visitor’s bullpen near where his July 10 home run landed.

St. Louis Cardinal closer Dave Veres will be sidelined at least seven days with a strained right hamstring suffered against the Dodgers on Saturday.

Veres is 3-2 with a 3.73 earned-run average and a team-leading 15 saves in 18 chances.

The Chicago Cubs recalled outfielder Roosevelt Brown and right-handers Carlos Zambrano and Scott Chiasson from triple-A Iowa, which was eliminated from the Pacific Coast League playoffs Saturday night.