You can count the Boston Herald’s Tony Massaroti amongst those who thought Theo Epstein and John Henry’s performances yesterday afternoon resolved nothing.

This really is not about blame anymore. On that subject, we all have been heard. The Red Sox dragged their feet in the Epstein talks and alienated the head of their baseball operation. Subsequently, the young and talented Theo Epstein walked out the door as if he had been given a dismissal note.

Signed, Epstein™s mother.

Yesterday, the one question for which no answer was given was also the one which needed no answer: Why? Henry deferred to Epstein on the matter and Epstein danced like Fred Astaire, but deep in our hearts, we all know the truth. Epstein did not trust Lucchino. And as mentor and protege went deeper and deeper into their relationship, they learned Epstein could not trust him, either

For all of the things the Red Sox must now address as they prepare for the 2006 season, the most fundamental concerns Lucchino. Why is he so difficult to trust? Lucchino™s baseball career is spotted with fractured relationships, none more costly than this one. Epstein was his apprentice, his pupil, his understudy. In theory, no one should have trusted Lucchino more. In reality, no one seemed to trust him less.

Ultimately, when all the nonsense is chopped away from an internal issue that exploded into a newspaper war, the bottom line is that Theo Epstein left the Red Sox because he felt like he could not trust Larry Lucchino, no matter what anybody else said, wrote or believed. Along the way, we learned that most of the media in Boston does not trust Lucchino, either, a reality that should prompt the highest levels of Sox ownership and management to do some serious soul-searching.