Tell the Yankees they are flirting with pitching disaster another time. Remind them they have four starters on the disabled list and they can't possibly win the pennant or even make the playoffs with what they have after the glow of Thursday night fades.
Most of all, the night of Alex Rodriguez's Fenway Park redemption was no time to remind him of what can't be done, not after he welcomed Curt Schilling back to the big leagues with a mammoth two-run homer in the ninth and resisted yelling, "Who's a Yankee?" at Schilling as he circled the bases after dooming the Red Sox to an 8-6 defeat in a game the Yankees trailed, 4-0, after an inning.
It was the high road all the way for A-Rod following a launch that could have been mistaken for the space shuttle, until it landed way up in the center-field bleachers. There was no need for him to get mouthy with Schilling, who led the Red Sox' taunting of him last fall and spring, but who got a taste of what Rodriguez has been feeding pitchers all season.
The silence of Fenway, juiced for Schilling's first appearance since April 23, in his new closer's role, said it all.
"I didn't see," Rodriguez said, when asked if he saw where the home run landed. "Some of the guys were joking about it."
After another depressing pitching development, the night ended in smiles and backslaps, but today is a new day, and the Yankees will be reminded all is not A-Rod OK taking the field behind Tim Redding.
The new guy sat between the dressing stalls of Buddy Groom and Mike Mussina Thursday afternoon, an unfamiliar face with a shaved head, a cellphone in his ear and no name identifying his space. Life went on all around Redding, the latest contestant in the reality show known as the Yankees' rotation.
Asked what he knew about the stranger named Redding, Mel Stottlemyre, the pitching coach, said, "Very little."
Asked if Redding had come to the Yankees in a recent trade with San Diego on anyone's recommendation, Brian Cashman, the general manager, said, "Guy by the name of Chance, first name, Take A."
In other words, take a number if you think you can pitch for the Yankees. Promise, they'll call.
They practically have an entire rotation on the disabled list, now that the season's most pleasant surprise, Wang Chien-ming (王建民), has joined Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright and Kevin Brown, and quite possibly for a very long stay, if Cashman's glum reluctance to divulge the initial diagnosis by Dr. Stuart Hershon, the team doctor, was any indication.
So after an 0-5 record with a 9.10 earned run average in San Diego and a five-inning start at the Yankees' Triple-A farm club in Columbus, Redding will be the Yankees' sacrifice at the Fenway altar in the second game of this four-game series. That was the good news until Gary Sheffield doubled off Schilling to begin the ninth and A-Rod got even with Schilling for calling his karate slap of Bronson Arroyo in Game 6 of the playoffs last fall "junior high school" baseball.
At least Redding was a name written in stone, or on a lineup card, more than Joe Torre or Cashman could offer Thursday for Sunday's fourth game of the series and Monday's opener of a series in Texas.
"Just like Wang got an opportunity, maybe Tim Redding or somebody else will," Cashman said. Then he called the offense "a little more important" until reinforcements arrive from the disabled list, or elsewhere.
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