“I don't count games left until September, but any time you can separate yourself, it's a big win,” Yankees manager Joe Torre admitted the day his team took a three-game lead over the Sox. Although he probably will never say it, Torre knows how important this five-game stretch at Fenway Park is if his team is to avoid being hounded by Boston right to the final week of the season.

Certainly if the Sox can win four of five and get through the two games Friday without chewing up their bullpen for the rest of the series, then the momentum will be with them with five weeks to play. If the Red Sox sag and fall four games off the pace for the first time this season, it will make the rest of the year a long march for them just to get back to level with New York.

The real question is, who has the better team? There isn't that much to pick between them, although the addition of Abreu gives the Yankees not only a better hitting team top to bottom than the Red Sox, but also a patient one that forces starting pitchers to work overtime just to get them out. What the Yankees have long believed is that once most teams are forced into their bullpen, problems arise that the Bronx Bombers can capitalize on.

Certainly that should be the Red Sox' greatest concern Friday, when Jason Johnson and Jon Lester will start. Both have struggled getting past the fifth inning since entering Boston's starting rotation, so if New York can force each to throw an inordinate amount of pitches early and get into Boston's bullpen on the first day of the series, the Yanks could attack the Sox at their weakest all weekend long.

Conversely, if Johnson and Lester can pitch solidly and get deeper into the game than they have, say the sixth or beyond, Boston will be set up better for the rest of the series. Assuming, of course, they find a way to win those first two games as well or at least split them.

In recent years, it seems to always come down to this in the AL East.

Yankees and Red Sox, both flawed but both unflappable, gnawing at each other with a playoff berth on the line. Nothing has changed this season and if the Yankees expect it's going to they had best make hay this weekend because if they don't, the long shadow cast by Ortiz, Ramierz, Curt Schilling, Josh Beckett and sensational young closer Jon Papelbon as well as the rest of the resilient Red Sox will hang over them like a dark cloud right up until the leaves begin to turn.

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