PHILADELPHIA On any list of wild and crazy World Series questions you thought would never be posed for public consumption, this one takes first, second and third place:

Is anyone around here going to give A-Rod a little help?
Yes, Mark Teixeira, consider this your $180 million hint.
Monday night, while representing the tying run, Teixeira advanced his wretched World Series with a game-ending strikeout recorded by Ryan Madson, who was practically sucking from an oxygen mask. The Phillies sent the Yankees and case after case of unopened champagne back to the Bronx, back to a place Joe Girardi didn’t want to visit in the worst way.
Game 6. No, make that Game 6 with a 37-year-old pitcher going on short rest.
Girardi loves Andy Pettitte. Heck, everybody loves Andy Pettitte, who has successfully cloaked those three scarlet letters — HGH — with his talent, demeanor and grace.
But Girardi saw what the Phillies did to a younger man on short rest in Game 5. A.J. Burnett wasn’t nearly as tough as his Bruce Lee tattoo, or as Philly’s otherworldly second baseman, Chase Utley, and now the defending champs will face Pettitte — who admitted he was “gassed” in Game 3 — with a renewed confidence and a nothing-to-lose approach.
That means the Yankees will need to score some runs to win their 27th championship.
And that means Mark Teixeira will need to wake up to win Alex Rodriguez’s first.
“You try to help your team win every single night,” Teixeira said. “Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t.
Teixeira is 2 for 19 in this World Series, a horror show that can’t go on.
“I feel like I’ve done a lot this postseason to help the team win,” he said. “That’s what I’m going to try to do tomorrow.”
Teixeira isn’t paid to be in the business of trying; he’s paid to be in the business of doing.
After a history of postseason meltdowns, Rodriguez has figured out the formula. Even though A-Rod has but four hits and seven strikeouts in the World Series, he has met the responsibilities of a clutch franchise player and cleanup man in October and November.
Rodriguez dominated the Twins, dominated the Angels, and recovered from six whiffs in the first two games against the Phillies to seize the World Series with one flick of his Game 3 wrists. A-Rod slammed a homer off a TV camera, reduced Cole Hamels to a puddle of goo, and left the Phillies burdened by doubt.
In the decisive sequence of Game 4, after Johnny Damon drove Brad Lidge batty in the ninth, Rodriguez laced a Lidge fastball for the winning two-out double.
“There’s no question, I have never had a bigger hit,” A-Rod said afterward. “But again, if you look at what Mark Teixeira and I have done in the World Series (it’s) not much...”
On the surface, that comment — or the Teixeira part of it — exposes A-Rod’s insecure core. He was sitting in a postgame news conference when he said it, basking in the lights, camera and action afforded the Game 4 hero.
Why did A-Rod feel the need to bring the first baseman into it? Why didn’t A-Rod take a public poke at himself and leave it at that?
Why? Because Teixeira deserved some public scrutiny, for one.
And because A-Rod knew how he’d be getting torched if he were performing like Teixeira, for two.
The third baseman isn’t performing anything like the first baseman. Rodriguez opened Game 5 with a hit that was nearly as big as the hit that won Game 4, a stroke that could’ve inspired a ticker-tape rain.
With Damon on in the first, Rodriguez started the scoring by taking the third pitch he saw from Cliff Lee and ripping it into the right-field corner.
The RBI gave A-Rod 16 for the postseason, breaking the franchise record he shared with Bernie Williams and Scott Brosius. Half of those 16 either tied the game or put the Yanks in the lead.
It was fitting Rodriguez broke the record against Lee, whom A-Rod had said was “as hot as any pitcher has been over the last two years.
“It’s going to be a great challenge. He’s going to come out ready, and so are we.”
At $305 million, A-Rod was ready.
At $180 million, Teixeira was not.
Teixeira entered Game 5 with a postseason batting average of .170 and a team-high 15 strikeouts against nine hits. He did have that 11th-inning homer to beat the Twins in Game 2 of the division series, and he did nearly eliminate the Angels with that three-run double in Game 5.
But that didn’t excuse him from showing up against the Phillies. In the first four games, Teixeira was batting .071 with a homer and 2 RBI.
He didn’t reverse the trend in his first three at-bats of Game 5, especially the third. Derek Jeter was on second base, two outs, right after Ryan Howard unsettled the Citizens Bank Park crowd by making a terrible choice on Damon’s groundout and letting Eric Hinske score.
With the Yanks having reduced the deficit to 6-2, and with A-Rod on deck, Teixeira made his own terrible choice: He swung at Lee’s first pitch and lifted a harmless fly to right to end the inning.
Teixeira finally contributed something in the eighth, doubling to left before Rodriguez followed with a two-run double of his own, pushing his franchise RBI record to 18.
Only A-Rod needs some help now to avoid an anything-goes Game 7 and the chance that the ghosts of 2004 can return with a vengeance in the new Yankee Stadium. The Phillies just beat up one Yankee starter on short rest, and they’ll have a chance to do the same in Game 6, and do it with a team Rodriguez said is “the best that’s come out of the National League in a long time.”
A-Rod can’t drive in enough runs by himself, just like he couldn’t Monday night, and Teixeira is the one in position to help the most.
The first baseman hasn’t played up to his talent or his contract in this World Series, and he needs to start right now.