08:13 AM EDT on Monday, September 27, 2004

BY STEVEN KRASNER
Journal Sports Writer

Journal photo / Bob Breidenbach Red Sox players congratulate each other after yesterday's 11-4 drubbing of the Yankees at Fenway in the last regular-season meetings of the teams this season.

BOSTON -- An elbow to the ribs. A verbal confrontation. A knockdown pitch. An ejection. A retaliatory brushback pitch. A bench-clearing gathering. A couple more ejections.

So, did you expect anything less from a Red Sox-Yankees clash?

Familiarity definitely has bred respect, if not contempt, and it continues to boil over between the two American League East rivals, as it did yesterday during Boston's 11-4 embarrassment of the Yankees at sun-splashed Fenway Park.

The victory enabled the Sox to capture the rubber game of the three-game series, accomplishing what New York had done only a week earlier in Yankee Stadium. That is, losing the first game and winning handily in the next two.

The triumph also kept Boston's flickering A.L. East title hopes alive. The Red Sox trail New York by 3 1/2 games (three in the loss column). The Yankees, who have six games remaining, have a magic number of four to clinch their seventh straight division title. Boston has seven games left.

The win moved the Red Sox, who went 11-8 against the Yankees this year, to within one win of clinching a wild-card berth, which has seemed to be just a formality for a week or so, anyway.

Most importantly, though, after Curt Schilling stifled the

Bronx Bombers on one hit for seven innings in winning his 21st game, and after the Red Sox had battered Kevin Brown and Esteban Loaiza for seven runs over the first two innings, yesterday's game proved that the intensity that exists when these teams play each other is a mere spark away from turning into bench-clearing fireworks.

Think Game 3 of last year's A.L. Championship Series at Fenway. Think July 24 at Fenway this season. Bad blood between the teams?

"I don't need to go there," said Boston manager Terry Francona, clearly uncomfortable answering the question. "We just wanted to win today. I don't need to go there."

Not that there should be any surprise that emotions run high when these two teams get together.

"Any time you play somebody 19 times, there are going to be problems. Emotions run high this time of year," said Boston first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz.

Mientkiewicz had a problem with the Yanks' Kenny Lofton, who elbowed him on his way past the bag on a routine groundout in the third. That play started the latest round of bad blood, carrying over into eighth-inning purpose pitches by Boston's Pedro Astacio and the Yanks' Brad Halsey, leading to their ejections and that of New York manager Joe Torre.

"The stakes are high," added the Sox' Dave Roberts, who was the target of Halsey's head-high fastball on the first pitch in the bottom of the eighth.

"It's one of those things where both teams are playing for the same thing year after year after year," chimed in Sox closer Keith Foulke. "When you go out and play hardball, and you're doing what you need to do to win, those things happen. They happen in all rivalries in baseball. We're professionals, but we care, and sometimes there are some things that tick you off. It's athletes being aggressive."

The Sox' aggressiveness at the plate against Brown, who was pitching for the first time since Sept. 3, when he pounded a Yankee Stadium clubhouse wall and broke his left hand in frustration, paid off in consecutive doubles by Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz and Trot Nixon.

The four-run first-inning splurge set the tone for the game, and the Yankees never recovered, playing sloppy baseball at times and getting only two meaningful hits -- Jorge Posada's two-run single off Schilling after three straight walks in the fourth and rookie Andy Phillips' two-run eighth-inning homer off Terry Adams for his first big-league hit in his first big-league at-bat.

The Red Sox still are in the Yanks' A.L. East rearview mirror, but they haven't gone away just yet. While most of the Sox expressed the notion that they just want to get into the playoffs, be it as the wild card or division winner, Kevin Millar isn't giving up on breaking the Yanks' A.L. East reign.

"It's still a race," declared Millar. "We still have seven games left. We could go 7-0. As long as we've still got some games left we've still got a chance."

Torre, clearly, would rather be in the position he and the Yankees are in than in Boston's position.

"It all comes down to the fact we are 3 1/2 ahead in first place with six games to play," said Torre. "It's still in our hands. Great teams really can't allow themselves to get caught up statistically still saying, 'You can't do this and you can't do that.' If you're good enough on any given day, then you should win it. Nothing that has happened previously good or bad is going to be an excuse one way or the other."

The fact that the Red Sox won the season series, meanwhile, will be relevant if the teams should finish in a tie for the A.L. East crown. Both teams would be in the playoffs -- with the second-place A.L. East team having a better record than the second-place team in any other division -- but the Sox would be deemed the divisional winner because they have the better record in head-to-head competition.

And both teams won't be one bit surprised if their paths cross again this year, in the ALCS, as it did a year ago.

"I felt that we played them really well this year," said Sox center fielder Johnny Damon. "And it may not be over. We're going to be ready to play them again in October."