It feels almost sacrilegious to mention this, but David Ortiz is threatening to have a better farewell party than Ted Williams.

In Boston, as Ortiz is the first to admit, there is Ted Williams and then everyone else. Williams is Big Papi, even to Big Papi.

Now 56 years after his retirement, Williams remains widely considered the greatest hitter who ever lived, and he has the numbers to prove it. At 41 years old, dotage for a baseball player in any era, Williams hit .316 with 29 home runs and 72 RBI in 390 at-bats. His on-base percentage was .451, his slugging percentage .645 and his OPS 1.096. Even as his career was coming to an end in September 1960, he was locked and loaded.

Ortiz was asked about that season this spring in Fort Myers, and he marveled at those numbers, as anyone should. Yet as he reminded Red Sox fans again last night, he’s turning his own long goodbye into a referendum on which aging Sox slugger will finish with the biggest bang.

Ortiz jumped all over a Jake Peavy cutter that went awry in the fourth inning last night and drove it 451 feet dead over the San Francisco Giants bullpen in right field through a strong wind for a three-run homer that propelled the Sox to their seventh win in eight games, a 4-0 whitewashing of the team with the best record in baseball.

Had that wind not been an ill one, Ortiz might have had two home runs off Peavy because he nailed a ball in the second inning that was skywriting “Goodbye Jake’’ as it flew until that wind knocked it down in center for a long out that proved to be a warning shot to his former teammate.

Come that fourth inning, it took only one Peavy pitch for Ortiz to drive his 23rd home run of the year out of the park. He’s now batting .327 with 75 RBI, an OBP of .421, a slugging percentage of .645 and an OPS of 1.085. Most of those numbers are running slightly below Williams’ final season, but only by a hair. The way Ortiz is slamming the baseball, it’s surely not a gray hair.

When someone inquired what he might be telling his young teammates about what is to come in the second half of a pennant race that last night was reduced to a half-game behind the Baltimore Orioles in the AL East, Ortiz pointed out most of them had been around long enough to know they would have to “bring it all to the table.’’

Ortiz certainly is doing that, and if he sticks to his guns, it will be the last time he visits that table, so it was suggested he might be having some special thoughts of his own. As those words were spoken, Ortiz turned slowly toward his questioner, sunglasses hiding his eyes, and said, “I’ll be doing all the thinking after the season is done. My mind is going with the flow.”

All season, that flow has been like Niagara Falls during the spring runoff, a pounding torrent that has him presently leading the major leagues in extra-base hits with 58, OPS, slugging and doubles. He’s second in the American League in batting and RBI as well.

When asked why he jumped all over Peavy’s first pitch in that fourth inning, he said succinctly, “I’m always go ready.’’ He could say the same thing about this final season.

If you asked Peavy last night, though, he was of a mind that his old teammate hadn’t gone quite soon enough. One game earlier would have been nice.

“He’s a year too late in retiring,’’ Peavy said jokingly. “I’d have loved to play that game without him (last night). I don’t know who is walking into those shoes and stepping up to be the presence he is on and off the field in every capacity. It wasn’t fun facing him tonight.’’

Surely it was not, but it was fun watching him last night and all through what has become a walk to rival the one Ted Williams took toward the exits 56 years ago.