All summer, the Yankees had waited for the curtain to rise on the pennant race, or at least a semblance of it. Something, anything, to awaken the world champs from this listless summer.

	Without Roger Clemens, who knows where the Yankees would be in the standings.

The Bronx Bombers, after all, had been eclipsed by the Mariners as the regular-season's best team, and August had reduced them to outright mediocrity: take away the five wins against the Devil Rays, and the Yankees were only 9-13 last month. And the last the time they'd won a series against a better-than-.500 team was just after the All-Star break, against the Phillies.

No wonder Joe Torre did more than accept a three-game series at Fenway this weekend at face value. He embraced it, calling it "a chance for us to measure ourselves" against a team that posed every possible threat to the Bombers.

The result? The Yankees have twice crushed Boston's self-confidence, all but ending the division race, and just as likely finishing off the Red Sox for 2001.

And in each instance, the Yankees delivered a powerful message to the Mariners, Indians and A's, who surely must be noticing the awakening taking place in the East.

In a 3-1 win on Friday night, Roger Clemens proved he's closer to a machine than mere mortal, fattening his record to 18-1 by winning his 14th straight decision. Clemens, who'd been getting more than seven runs per game from the Yankees, proved he could prosper in a low-scoring affair, too. Incredibly, he was being out-pitched by Frank Castillo, and who knows what would've happened had manager Joe Kerrigan not gone to his bullpen after 89 pitches. Kerrigan chose Derek Lowe (who had a 7.71 ERA against the Yankees this summer) over Rich Garces (1.69 ERA) and just that quickly, Jorge Posada blasted a two-run homer, dooming the Sox.

The win cemented Clemens' standing among his teammates. Bernie Williams calls him, "our terminator" and Paul O'Neill added, "without Roger, we'd be struggling just to get to be at .500. It's incredible what he's done for us."

Clemens, as usual, refuses to gloat over his achievements this year, or the fact that he's still throwing so hard at age 39. His 10-strikeout performance against Boston was the 98th of his career, pushing him past Sandy Koufax on the all-time, double-digit strikeout list, although the Rocket's first reflex is to thank his bullpen.

"It's nice to know I can go out there and empty my tank for seven innings," he said, referring to the backup help he received from Ramiro Mendoza and Mariano Rivera on Friday.

What made the win so critical, according to O'Neill is, "Roger knew how much this game meant to us. Sometimes the hardest thing is to do what's expected of you, and Roger is expected to win every time he goes out there."

That's the same burden that accompanies Pedro Martinez every time he steps on the mound, and if Friday's game was a pennant-race barometer for the Bombers, then Saturday's game was literally an apocalypse for the Red Sox.

This was their best chance to dent the Yankees, maybe their last chance. Pedro was back, seemingly healthy, facing a winless Orlando Hernandez. Martinez did his part -- shutting out New York for six innings -- but one more time, the Yankees prevailed at the 11th hour.

This time, Kerrigan correctly used Garces, who shut out the Yankees in the seventh, and instead of handing the ball to Derek Lowe in the eighth, he trusted Ugueth Urbina with a 1-0 lead. But the Sox needed six outs from Urbina, not just three, and he was no match for that responsibility.

Urbina couldn't prevent Chuck Knoblauch -- who batted just .196 in August -- from lashing the game-tying single in the eighth. And when Bernie Williams hit his second homer in two games -- well, Manny Ramirez all but stated the obvious when he addressed the possibility of a miracle Boston comeback in the last 28 games of the season.

"If it happens, it happens. If not, we'll come back next year," Ramirez said. "It's not the end of the world."

Of course, the Sox still have mathematical hope, and they're clinging to the unlikely possibility of sweeping the Yankees in the remaining five games against the world champs. But it's more likely Martinez -- who still hasn't been able to recapture that 96-mph explosiveness on his fastball, despite his effectiveness -- will be shut down for the rest of the season.

Why risk Pedro's fragile right shoulder, when the race now looks so lopsided? For now, Kerrigan says Martinez will make his next start, although he concedes "we'll be taking a look at our lineup" before Sunday night's game against Mike Mussina.

The Sox, once so dangerous that Joe Torre admitted, "they scare the hell out of me," have scored just two runs in two games against New York. They're not finished. Not yet. But it's close.

Bob Klapisch of The Record (Bergen County, New Jersey) covers baseball for ESPN.com.