Boston ? The Boston Red Sox insist that Grady Little’s disastrous decision to stick with Pedro Martinez in the seventh game of the AL championship series isn’t the only reason they let him go.

It sure didn’t help.

Little was dismissed Monday by the Red Sox, less than two weeks after he left his tiring ace in too long, probably costing the team a chance to play in the World Series for its first championship since 1918. Little wasn’t fired — he was sent off with kind words and a $250,000 bonus but without a new contract to replace the one that expires Friday.

The Red Sox said that the parting of the ways, as they called it, was not solely based on what happened in Game 7 of the ALCS. According to the Red Sox news release, owner John Henry “took the position well before the postseason that the club may need to question a long-term commitment to its manager.”

“This is not an organization that makes decisions of this importance based on one event,” president Larry Lucchino said.

Still, Lucchino conceded that it would have been difficult to let Little go if he had made the World Series and impossible if he had won it.

“It would have been ungrateful in the extreme,” he said.

The team released a statement from Little in which he thanked the team for the opportunity to manage in the majors and stressed his accomplishments over two years in which he won 93 and 95 games.

“Yes, we came up short of our goal, and to the Red Sox Nation, I say: I hurt with each of you,” he said. “It was painful for all of us.”