NEW YORK (AP) — Another August sweep of the Boston Red Sox put the New York Yankees in prime position for a September play-off run.

Chien-Ming Wang took a no-hit bid into the seventh inning, Robinson Cano homered twice off Curt Schilling and the Yankees beat Boston 5-0 yesterday for their third straight win over the Red Sox.

Wang and a pair of rookie relievers combined on a two-hitter in a game that included two ejections. Derek Jeter went 4-for-4.

Boston manager Terry Francona, already miffed at the commissioner's office for sending a security official into his dugout a night earlier to check whether he was wearing his uniform shirt, got hot again, and this time it had nothing to do with the style police.

Francona was ejected in the seventh inning after umpires reversed a call and ruled Kevin Youkilis out for running out of the basepaths to elude a tag by third baseman Alex Rodriguez on J.D. Drew's sharp grounder. Boston trailed 2-0 at the time, and the decision gave the Yankees a key double play. The Red Sox never recovered.

Last year, the Yankees swept a five-game series at Boston from August 18-21, opening a six-and-a-half game lead and taking control of the division race.

With this sweep, the Yankees closed within five games of the AL East leaders and put themselves in position to possibly end the day in the wild-card lead. New York, who began the day one percentage point behind the Seattle Mariners, had not finished a day in play-off position since April 10, when the Yankees were 4-3.

Seattle had lost five straight entering a 10-day trip that began with a make-up game in Cleveland yesterday.

A day after Roger Clemens took a no-hit bid into the sixth inning, Wang (16-6) did the Rocket an inning better.

The right-hander tied for the major league leads in wins, improving to 13-2 since June 1 when he beat Boston to start his run.

With the sellout crowd of 55,067 starting to sense a special day was possible, Kevin Youkilis reached leading off the seventh when he grounded to shortstop Jeter, whose throw pulled first baseman Jason Giambi off the bag for an error. Jeter's throw was to the plate side, and Youkilis slid under Giambi's tag, prompting Yankees manager Joe Torre to come out and discuss the call with first-base umpire Ted Barrett.

Mike Lowell followed by grounding a clean single to right, putting runners on first and second and bringing up Drew, who hit the grounder to A-Rod. Replays showed Youkilis went onto the infield grass to avoid the tag by Rodriguez, who then threw to first for a double play.

Joba Chamberlain pitched around a double by Dustin Pedroia in the eighth and was ejected with one out in the ninth after throwing consecutive 98-99 mph pitches over the head of Youkilis, who looked back at plate umpire Angel Hernandez and stared at Torre after the manager came out to discuss the pitch with the umps.