Boston's win left both teams at 94-66 and guaranteed that at least one team's playoff fate won't be decided until Sunday. AP
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BOSTON -- Tino Martinez, a one-time Yankees hero relegated to the bench in this most recent bloodletting between baseball's two biggest rivals, looked up at the American League East standings plastered on Fenway Park's Green Monster late Friday afternoon and laughed.

"Let's see," he said as he and his teammates readied to stretch before the 69th meeting between the Red Sox and Yankees in the last three years, "if we beat them, they'll be 35 games out."

Well ... no. Not exactly. But we probably can excuse Martinez for his slight mathematical miscalculation in this final down-to-the-wire weekend in baseball's regular season. Figuring out who might play whom, and where, when the postseason begins next week is not getting any easier.

"I knew it was going to be like this at the end of the season," David Ortiz, Boston's MVP candidate, said before the game. "I had a good feeling."

The Sox did their duty Friday in jacking up the possible postseason permutations, riding the pitching of David Wells to slip past the Bronx bumblers 5-3. That pulled the Sox into a tie with the Yankees atop the East, a tie that will be broken for at least a day, one way or the other, when New York lefty Randy Johnson goes against Boston knuckleballer Tim Wakefield on Saturday afternoon.

The Sox, to do their part in this mess, absolutely had to win Friday night's game. If they'd have lost it, they would have fallen two games behind the Yankees with two to play.

Friday's game wasn't another postseason classic-in-the-making between these two teams -- lord knows, we've had enough of those lately -- but it had all the earmarks of one, from the nip in the evening air to the celebrities roaming the field (Robert Redford was the biggie) to the almost palpable sense of desperation that hung around the old park.

Yes, the Sox needed this one badly. So they turned to Wells, the loose cannon of a lefty who reveres Babe Ruth and once said that he'd like to be the one to push the button that blows up Fenway. Wells overcame some early wildness to confuse and frustrate the swinging Yankees, allowing six hits and three runs over seven innings in notching his 15th win of the season.

"When you get an opportunity to pitch in this type of game, you gotta love it," he said afterward. "You've got to want to go out and just take the reins and run with it."

Wells did his part to knot up the standings, but he'll have to give an assist to two unexpected sources for the win. The first goes to the Yankees themselves, who bumbled their way in a Boston sixth inning that put the game sufficiently out of reach. The Sox turned two walks, a steal, two singles, a short sacrifice fly and a terrible unforced error from New York's Jason Giambi -- the first baseman handled an easy toss to the plate like he did his public apology this spring, stumbling around and throwing it not quite anywhere -- into three runs, enough to keep the Yankees at bay even after Derek Jeter's two-run homer off a tiring Wells in the seventh.

And then the Boston bullpen -- yes, Virginia, there is a Boston bullpen -- shut down the mighty Yankees over the final two innings, allowing only one hit while striking out four.

Jason Varitek (left) homered in the second inning put the Sox ahead for good and Mike Timlin shut the door with a four-out save. Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

"I've never been in a bullpen, in my 15 years, that hasn't taken criticism, or been maligned or something," closer Mike Timlin said in sloughing off all the negative talk. "People are going to criticize what you do."

Boston relievers rank as the worst in baseball, but over the last week or so, they are finally showing signs of finding a kind of uneasy rhythm. Manager Terry Francona used three pitchers for three straight batters in the eighth, and all did their jobs. Chad Bradford, the submarining righty, got Gary Sheffield on a one-pitch groundout to shortstop. Mike Myers, the submarining lefty, worked a lot harder on the next batter, finally striking out Hideki Matsui on the 11th pitch of a scintillating showdown.

Timlin then entered the game and hypnotized Jorge Posada on a big curve for the first of three strikeouts, earning his 13th save of the season.

"Let Bradford come in and get who he's supposed to, let Myers get who he's supposed to," Francona said. "And when they do that it sets it up for Timlin. It looks good."

Now, with two games left in the 2005 regular season, the Sox are set. Or at least better set than they were when they walked into Fenway on Friday afternoon. They know that two wins earn them their first AL East title since 1995. A split means they still could win the East but only if they also win a playoff game with the Yankees.

And two losses? Well, two losses mean that they lose the East. But after the Indians' 13-inning loss to the White Sox on Friday, the Sox still could win the wild card, depending on how the Indians finish out.

"It's a must-win again for us," Red Sox center fielder Johnny Damon, speaking for his entire team, said of Saturday's game.

Martinez, and the Yankees, must be thinking the exact same thing.