"Listen up, Red Sox fans: Josh Beckett wants you to know he had perfect attendance at gym class last season.

That was essentially Big Boy's message yesterday morning when the right-hander held his much-anticipated first media session of spring training. While using carefully crafted, Beltway-type language to explain away the Red Sox' humiliating and historic September collapse — "I'm not saying we didn't make mistakes, because we did make mistakes in the clubhouse," he offered — Beckett isn't buying into the widely held belief that his inability to stay in top shape contributed to it."