The Yankees dugout was so silent, it bordered on electric.

Mike Mussina was one strike away from a perfect game, overpowering Carl Everett, and, as Joe Torre said, "We were ready to explode onto the field. We all thought Mike was going to do it."

There Mussina stood, taking one last deep breath, ready to unleash his final 90-something fastball. One more. Just one more. That's all that stood between Mussina and the fourth perfect game in Yankee history, and the 11th regular-season no-hitter.

The Yankees, of course, beat the Red Sox 1-0, completing a three-game sweep at Fenway, and stretching their all-but-impenetrable lead in the AL East to nine games. But the real story Sunday night was Mussina, whose brush with history ended in one unlikely at-bat against Everett.

Talk about an unstoppable surge of momentum. Mussina had Everett at a 1-2 advantage in the count -- the same Everett whom Mussina fanned four times in his last encounter with the Red Sox on May 24.

Mussina had relied on his rising fastball, striking out 13 Red Sox. This at-bat with Everett, this very last pitch, would be no different. He took the sign from Jorge Posada, gathered himself, wound up, and delivered the ball "pretty much where I wanted it to go," Mussina said.

Up and away. Which, Everett said through a club spokesman, "is the pitch that Mussina usually strikes me out with."

So who could possibly explain Everett cleanly lining the pitch to left-center, a line drive that neither Chuck Knoblauch nor Bernie Williams could get close to?

Mussina insisted he wouldn't second-guess his choice of pitches, although he did admit, "I'm disappointed, obviously. I'm still disappointed. I'm going to think about that pitch until I retire."

Everett rounded first and shook his fist in triumph. Fenway's ovation was thunderous, too, because if the Sox were going to be swept, at least they wouldn't suffer the indignity of a perfect game in their own house.

Except for Everett's base hit, it was otherwise a lost weekend for Boston. Everything the Red Sox did well, the Yankees did better -- especially pitch. In fact, the Bombers didn't score an earned run in 21 1/3 innings against Boston's starting pitchers, yet were able to win all three games.

Torre shook his head, saying, "That's the amazing thing, how we were able to hold our own in this series when we just couldn't put runs on the board. To score three, two and one (run) and still win, that's huge."

If nothing else, the Yankees can look at the sweep as a living, breathing advertisement of their best weapon -- starting pitching. And perhaps the weekend's most important development was the re-emergence of Orlando Hernandez's fastball, which allowed him to outlast Pedro Martinez on Saturday and beat the Sox 2-1.

The Bombers didn't just sweep the series, they all but stamped Property of the World Champs on the AL East. That's no small achievement, considering the Yankees hadn't taken a series from a team with a winning record since just after the All-Star break.

But once Roger Clemens ran his record to 18-1 on Friday, and El Duque prevailed on Saturday, all Mussina had to do was ride the wave of perfect karma. If Pedro couldn't beat the Yankees, what chance would David Cone have?

Only, no one counted on Cone being nearly as unhittable as Mussina, not allowing an earned run in 8 1/3 innings. Talk about living in a time tunnel. This was Cone, circa 1999 -- so effective with his sinkers and sliders and splitters, Torre said, "that was as good as I've seen David throw since his perfect game (against Montreal in 1999)."

Torre was impressed enough to say that when Cone was removed from the game in the ninth inning after victimized by Boston's poor infield defense, "I wanted to applaud him."

Cone was victimized by Lou Merloni's inability to turn Paul O'Neill's sharp grounder into an inning-ending double play in the ninth, allowing the Yankees to put runners on first and third. When Enrique Wilson followed with a double over first base to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead, all Mussina needed was three more outs.

Out No. 1 was Shea Hillenbrand's smash that nearly whistled past Clay Bellinger at first base. But Bellinger, who was in the game after pinch-running for Tino Martinez in the top of the ninth, dove, gloved the ball and flipped it to Mussina, who covered first base for the out.

That's when David Justice said, "I thought Mike was going to get it. We all thought so. We thought it was going to happen for him."

Out No. 2 was a Merloni strikeout -- quick and painless, just like all the others.

And then there was Everett, who in three pitches, fouled off a fastball, swung and missed at another and barely managed to lay off a tempting heater that rose past the letters.

The perfect games was all Mussina's. One more pitch. One more strike. One he never got.

"I guess it wasn't meant to be," Mussina said, not smiling, and certainly not kidding.

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