Their Nation Has Sore Subjects

Does it matter that Pedro Martinez will face the Angels at Edison Field tonight but probably will not talk to reporters about it if he maintains a ban he has imposed for as long as he is in Boston?

Does it matter that the remaining Red Sox, with the exception of Manny Ramirez who also does not talk to reporters, have decided they will respond to queries but only if they deal directly with baseball?

The answer to both questions is that it’s too bad and a bit of temperamental overkill that may pass in time, but neither the Martinez ban nor the conditional stance of his teammates really matters in the long run.

In the long run, what matters for the Red Sox -- and what matters to their skittish and long-suffering Nation -- is whether they can answer the question posed by the New York Yankees, whose swords are more dreaded and dangerous than any reporter’s pen.

Can they keep the streaking Yankees within shuttle distance in the American League East, or are the Red Sox really playing for the wild card, their assigned lot in this latest era of dominance by the Evil Empire?

Well, it’s only April, of course, but it’s never too early for a little realism as the Yankees generate a pace projecting to more than 130 wins.

Shea Hillenbrand, the third baseman-first baseman-designated hitter who leads the AL in runs batted in, displayed that realism when he mentioned the concept of the wild card while acknowledging the “unbelievable” talent of the Yankees and said it wasn’t frustrating to see them off to another intimidating start because “this is my third year and it’s been like this every year.” Nor, he said, can the Red Sox allow themselves to focus on the Yankees.

“We’d love to beat them, but we have to focus on the things we can control, the goal of winning every game we can,” Hillenbrand said. “It would be a different story if there wasn’t a wild card. Then we’d have to put more focus on the Yankees, worry more about what they were doing every day.”

General Manager Theo Epstein doesn’t like the idea that wild card thinking may have already infiltrated the clubhouse, but he too suggested that you can’t ignore the format before he caught himself to say the real goal is winning the division.

“It’s a challenge to compete in a division with the Yankees,” he said from Boston, “but I think we’re up for it. We haven’t played our best baseball but we’ve stayed relatively tight. At the same time, we’re not preoccupied with any one club. Our goal is to be one of the eight clubs in the postseason.”

Epstein paused, realizing he may have been marketing the wrong message, then added, “I don’t want that to be a headline because the one sure way to reach the postseason is by winning the division and that’s what we start out with as a goal.”

With their victory over the Angels on Friday night, the Red Sox were 15-8, leading the wild-card race and only four games behind New York. Although it was a record largely achieved against the dregs of the East, the Red Sox will take their victories where they can while Martinez and Derek Lowe, who combined for 41 wins last year, sort out some April inconsistency, Manager Grady Little settles into a lineup routine (the Red Sox are second in the league in hits and runs) and the Nation teeters with the nightly dramas/traumas of the infamous bullpen by committee.

Red Sox relievers had the league’s highest earned-run average (6.03) before the weekend and had blown three of eight save opportunities, but through injury and ineffectiveness the committee is now down to two basic closers, Chad Fox and Brandon Lyon, and Little is hoping he can begin recouping the 40 saves that Ugueth Urbina took to Texas when the Red Sox made an economic decision that has already proved costly.

“We went through a rough stretch as a team, but it wasn’t just the bullpen,” Hillenbrand said. “I think we’ve come out of it and handled ourselves real well. I think we have a better feel and are doing a better job of knowing our roles and feeding off each other, taking care of the things each of us can control.”

To their dismay, however, the Red Sox can’t control what’s written by an intensely competitive and omnipresent press corps.

“In this environment, everything tends to be magnified,” said Epstein.

The result can be overreaction on both sides.

Martinez, who has basically been treated like royalty by Boston media, didn’t mind using the media this spring to plead his contract case. But when he took some printed heat after failing to show gratitude for the club’s picking up his $17.5-million option six months before the deadline and some later heat when he was rocked in a cold-weather start at Baltimore, Martinez ultimately cited other perceived slights and said he would maintain a veil of silence for as long as he was in Boston.

The two-time Cy Young winner forcefully reiterated that position in a clubhouse incident that required Nomar Garciaparra’s intervention Thursday in Texas, but it’s a vow that may be difficult for the gregarious Martinez to maintain and one that apparently doesn’t include some electronic reporters, because he told Red Sox telecaster Jerry Remy that same day that he has been hampered by a knot in his lower back since the Baltimore pounding April 12, a condition the club insists is not serious.

Another situation came to a head Thursday when Lowe also angrily chastised reporters for invading players’ privacy. Lowe cited a Boston Herald column related to a bumper sticker that Mike Timlin had put over his locker. The sticker suggested that anyone not supporting the war in Iraq was un-American. Timlin acknowledged he had made the issue public by being quoted in the column but said it unfairly portrayed him as a “Southern neoconservative” and led to potential rifts with teammates who disagreed with the sticker. Timlin had to calm Lowe during his outburst with reporters.

Amid the fraying relationships on that dog day afternoon in Texas, Little called a clubhouse meeting, after which it was announced that the players would continue speaking with reporters but only on baseball-related subjects. Garciaparra has even demanded 24-hour notice on interview requests.

“I think the problem starts from not talking about baseball, simple as that,” Little said in Anaheim, where his team is trying to keep pace with the walk and talk of the Yankees -- and isn’t that what really matters?

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Angel Stopper

Boston’s Pedro Martinez, who starts tonight against the Angels, needs 74 1/3 innings pitched to reach 2,000 for his career. A look at what he has done against the Angels:

* Games...9

* Wins-Losses...7-1

* Innings pitched...66 1/3

* Earned run average...1.36

* Earned runs...10

* Hits...45