Mike Celizic

“We still have a chance.”

That's what Theo Epstein, architect of the Boston Red Sox 2004 World Series championship team, told reporters Sunday — one day before the Yankees completed a five-game sweep at Fenway Park and ballooned their lead in the American League East to 6 1/2 games.

It's probably the same thing Custer said at Little Big Horn.

Epstein has to say that, if only because that’s what he’s paid to do, but the rest of us can state the obvious: The Yankees won't be caught.

A team that looked last spring as if it wouldn’t get through the season has become what its owner insists it be — the best team in baseball. The starting pitching is adequate, the middle relief pretty darned good and the closer still the best in the business. A potent starting line-up has been turned into an opposing pitcher’s nightmare with the addition of Bobby Abreu, who, as The Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan said, seems as if he were born on first base, at the trade deadline.

It has survived injury, resisted the ravages of Father Time and never caved in to the adversity it has faced. Its manager, Joe Torre, has his share of critics, but when the smoke finally cleared in Fenway, you could argue that this year the imperturbable manager has done his greatest job of  managing ever, and that includes the four-titles-in-five-years run of 1996-2000.

Like those Yankees teams, this one beats you whichever way it has to. The first four games of this Boston series were classic examples. In the first three, they poured on runs until even Boston’s powerful lineup couldn’t catch up. Then, after three bludgeonings of a Red Sox pitching staff that is thinner than bus-station bathroom tissue, the Yankees won Monday morning in classic fashion. They spotted Boston’s ace, Curt Schilling, a 5-3 lead, the worked their way into the bullpen until they had the bases loaded in the eighth with none out.

They got one off Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon on a sac fly by Jason Giambi, then got the equalizer in the ninth when Derek Jeter, who actually is as good as New York fans say he is, no matter what the statistics wonks try to tell you, dumped a two-out bloop single into right. An inning later, with Mariano Rivera keeping order on the mound, they added three more and the long New England winter officially began on the 21st day of August.

On Monday afternoon, in the series finale, Yankees newcomer Cory Lidle shut down the Sox for six innings, and fellow newcomer Bobby Abreu had one of the team's two RBIs in the 2-1 victory.

So much for what everyone thought — or hoped — would be a classic five-game series between the Red Sox, the team that had led the AL East for almost the entire summer, and their ancient foes, the Yankees, who had taken over the lead just recently and were trying not to give it back.

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I don’t know that a lot of analysts saw this coming back in March, when the Yankees began the season with a roster that looked as if it had been dragooned into service from an old-timers game and a pitching staff that was short at least two serviceable starters. And they sure didn’t see it a month later, when Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield both went down with serious wrist injuries from which both are still recovering.

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