The Yankees were Pedro Martinez’s “Daddy” Friday night. Then, daddy got spanked Saturday and yesterday by Pedro’s Boston Red Sox brothers. Who is in charge here? Can anything or anyone be trusted on either team? This kind of thing is very tough on the children.

Yesterday’s 11-4 Red Sox victory over the Yankees just confirmed what has been pretty obvious all year long when these two teams get together. Believe nothing. Trust no one. Look no further ahead than the next day’s game.

As Yankee sage-in-residence Joe Torre said in the cramped Fenway Park manager’s office yesterday, “Every one of these games takes on a life of its own.”

“It’s like a disagreement in a family,” Torre added. “You address it, it’s over with, and you go on loving somebody.”

Despite Martinez’s Friday night wish that the Yankees disappear and never come back, neither of these teams is going anywhere, except at each other’s throats in the playoffs.

No one knows how it will all end for these two teams this year, least of all the men most deeply involved in it. And why should they?

Last week, it was a heartbreaking loss for the home team followed by two routs. This week, same story, different park.

The Red Sox, widely believed to have been on the wrong end of a “message” sent their way by the Yankees last weekend in the Bronx, replied in kind this weekend at Fenway.

Now, they and the Yankees go their separate ways until October. Their next meeting is tentatively scheduled for the American League Championship Series somewhere in the middle of the month.

The Yankees leave Boston with their division lead intact but shrunken, and with their confidence undoubtedly shaken. The same woes that were vexing them on Thursday remain with them this morning.

Javier Vazquez, who couldn’t make it out of the fifth inning Saturday, can’t be relied upon to do any better in the postseason. Kevin Brown, who couldn’t get three outs yesterday, will get another shot, but why bother? The way he pitched yesterday, and sounded afterward, it is more likely Brown will break another bone before he breaks another bat.

Esteban Loiaza, pressed into mop-up duty after Brown was chased, did nothing to re-earn a spot in the Yankee rotation, allowing six earned runs in 4 2 /3 innings.

So what was true on Friday afternoon remains true today. The Yankees have three reliable starters and a bullpen full of question marks. The Red Sox, who will probably fall short in the divisional race, still hit the hell out of the baseball, and still play the Yankees as if the men in pinstripes had stolen something from them.

Which, of course, they have. Try the last 86 seasons. So for anyone who saw this past weekend at Fenway as an opportunity for the Yankees to stomp out those pesky Sox once and for all, guess again. If anything, the three-game series, in which the Red Sox outscored the Yankees 27-15, ensures that this October will be every bit as agonizing for fans as it will be compelling for disinterested observers.

Yesterday, the most tortured man in Boston had to be Brown, making his first start since busting his non-pitching hand in a tussle with a concrete wall at Yankee Stadium following a 3-1 loss to Baltimore on September 3.

A noted rock-head, Brown started yesterday’s game by trying to snare Johnny Damon’s grounder with his bad hand. Luckily, he missed. Unluckily, that turned out to be his best moment of the game.

Five straight hits – a single followed by doubles by Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and Trot Nixon and another single by Jason Varitek – and the Red Sox had a 4-0 lead. Brown was done two batters later, but the Red Sox were not.

Loiaza allowed three more in the second, another in the fifth and three more in the eighth. At that point, Torre started trying out spare parts: Steve Karsay, Brad Halsey, and C.J. Nitkowski all saw action. Someone named Andy Phillips batted for Alex Rodriguez and hit his first major league homer, scoring someone else named Felix Escalona, who had batted for Derek Jeter.

Dioner Navarro, the catching prospect who wasn’t enticing enough to get the Diamondbacks to send Randy Johnson to the Bronx, got a few innings of work in. Clearly, Torre was managing for another day.

That day is coming soon, maybe too soon for the Yankees.

“You don’t want to say, ‘We’ll meet again,’ because you don’t want to diminish any of the other teams in the postseason,” Torre said. “But…”

They’ll meet again. Whether Brown, Loiaza, or Vazquez will be important parts of the next meeting remains to be seen. At his locker after the game, Brown was the picture of dejection.

“I hate that I convinced Mel [Stottlemyre] and them to give me a shot, and then went out there and was not able to make good on, you know, what we all hoped was gonna happen.” Brown said. “I’m not the same guy I was in the beginning of the year, in April. Ever since I got sick, you know, things changed. I’ve been searching, working. I tried more work, less work. I tried everything I could think of to be the pitcher I was earlier. It really hasn’t happened. But I’ll keep trying, and that’s all I’m gonna do.”

For the first time in his brief Yankee tenure, Kevin Brown, frustrated and at a loss for what to do next, was the perfect spokesperson for the rest of his team.

Mr. Matthews is the host of the “Wally and the Keeg” sports talk show heard Monday-Friday from 4–7 p.m. on 1050 ESPN radio.