BOSTON -- Powerful David Ortiz now stands alone in the Boston Red Sox record books.

The Sox' burly designated hitter blasted the first pitch he saw in his first at-bat last night over the Boston bullpen for his 51st round-tripper of the season, vaulting from a brief tie with Jimmie Foxx into sole possession of the franchise's single-season home-run record.

And for a man known for his flair for the dramatic, given his knack for delivering walkoff homers, Ortiz, who had tied Foxx's 68-year-old record the night before, took any tense build-up out of the equation by seizing the moment quickly at Fenway Park last night.

He didn't victimize any ham-and-egger, either.

Ortiz's record-setting blast came off superb Minnesota left-hander Johan Santana, the shoo-in for the Cy Young Award this season and a prime contender in some circles for the MVP Award, too.

Santana, despite his league-best 18-5 record and 2.77 earned-run average, proved no match for Ortiz, whose own MVP hopes began to fade not because of any dropoff in his personal statistics, but because of the team's nose-dive over the last month.

Ortiz turned on a belt-high fastball that was on the inner half of the plate and, unleashing his lightning-like bat speed and powerful follow-through, crushed a no-doubt-about-it rocket on a towering path that dropped the ball about five rows behind the Boston bullpen in right-center.

Ortiz, who stands 6-foot-4 and whose weight is liberally listed at 230 pounds, had tied Foxx's record with another first-pitch homer, off Boof Bonser in the sixth inning Wednesday night, on a similar rocket launch, this one touching down over the Sox bullpen just to the right of the 420-foot marker in the triangle area in center field.

Just for good measure, Ortiz clubbed homer number 52, a rifle shot to dead center in the seventh off right-hander Matt Guerrier.

His teammates, who mobbed him when he got back to the dugout after the record-setting 51st, gave him the silent treatment after number 52, which tied Ortiz for the 12th-most in the American League.

The playful Sox were silent for a while, before they congratulated him in the dugout. The crowd's cheers prompted Ortiz to hop back onto the field for a curtain call.

"It was a great feeling, especially to do it at home in front of my fans. It was pretty fun. The people were going crazy," said Big Papi, who beat his good friend Santana, whom he played with in the Twins' organization.

"It's not a secret he has the best stuff in the league," said Ortiz. "You might get one pitch to hit and not see another one. I was ready. That was the pitch I thought I'd see and I didn't want to miss it."

The three homers the last two games came after a 1-for-12 drought. A tip from batting coach Ron "Papa Jack" Jackson during Wednesday night's game proved beneficial.

"I'm not going to lie. Before I hit the one last night, I felt I was over-trying for a couple of games," said Ortiz. "He told me something I normally do at the plate I wasn't doing. As soon as he told me that, I hit a home run (number 50). If you know you can hit home runs, you just try to hit the ball and that's when you hit home runs."

Nothing Ortiz does surprises anyone on the Sox, said manager Terry Francona.

"It's phenomenal what he has done," said Francona. "We all know what he's capable of. He might come back next year and do even better. That was fun to be part of it. David means so much to all of us. I think the most honest thing I can say is that as good a hitter as he is, he's probably a better person. That's something."

Winning pitcher Josh Beckett got an adrenalin boost from Ortiz, he said.

"It gave me chills when he hit (number) 51," said Beckett. "You want to win the game when he accomplishes such a feat. He's unbelievable. He's a pretty special beast."

Somehow, it had to be fitting for Ortiz to tie the Sox record and then smash it at the expense of the Twins, who gave up on him after the 2002 season, letting him go via free agency after injuries had plagued the slugger.

And, if not for Minnesota's home dome, Ortiz would already have had 51 homers when he stood in to face Santana in the first inning. On June 15, Ortiz bashed a mammoth drive that seemed headed to the upper deck in right-center when it was intercepted by a speaker, the resulting collision knocking the ball down to the turf at the Metrodome for a single instead of a certain homer.

"It's not easy hitting 50 home runs," Ortiz had said Wednesday night, after becoming only the 13th different player in American League history to reach that plateau.

But Ortiz has made it look easy.

Ortiz, 30, was incredibly consistent with his home-run hitting prowess this year. His longest drought was an 11-gamer (39 at-bats) between his 14th on May 19 in Philadelphia and number 15 on May 31 in Toronto.

His next-longest homer droughts lasted a mere six games, with Ortiz suffering through three of those mini-slumps.

Ortiz racked up six two-homer games along the way, and of his 52 homers, numbers 18 (against Texas), 22 (Philadelphia) and 37 (Cleveland) were walkoff round-trippers.

Very few, if any, have been cheap. And he has hit homers to all fields as he has done since joining the Red Sox as a free agent in 2003, accumulating 170 homers in a Red Sox uniform, tying him with Jackie Jensen for 11th place on Boston's all-time list in only four full seasons.

Ortiz, whose homer and RBI (131) totals lead the league, doesn't just feast on mediocre pitchers, either. Or just against right-handed pitchers. Indeed, 17 of the 52 were hit off left-handers by Ortiz, a left-handed hitter.

His list of victims, aside from Santana, features at least two future Hall of Famers -- Mariano Rivera and John Smoltz. Others, such as right-handers Mike Mussina, Tom Gordon, Justin Verlander, Scot Shields, Freddy Garcia and Jered Weaver and left-handers Mark Buehrle, Scott Kazmir and Barry Zito weren't exactly chopped liver this season, either. He also took lefty specialist Mike Myers deep.

And he hit many of them when they counted most. Of his 52, 17 were hit in the seventh inning or later.

Ortiz also seems to have a sense of history.

He is only the second player to hit a homer that was either number 50 or higher in a season at Fenway Park. The New York Yankees' Mickey Mantle also hit number 51 at Fenway, exactly 50 years to the day of Ortiz's, back on Sept. 21, 1956. Mantle also slugged number 54 at Fenway in 1961.

But last night, history belonged to David Ortiz.

skrasner@projo.com / (401) 277-7340