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Injured Wang will be sidelined well into summer

...which... is such a terrible headline, for so many reasons

Edinson Volquez went a long way toward earning a return trip to Yankee Stadium Friday night.

Volquez went seven innings, allowing two runs on seven hits, to beat the New York Yankees 4-2 before 53,421 at Yankee Stadium to help the Reds snap a five-game losing streak.

"Edinson was outstanding," Reds manager Dusty Baker said. "It was one of his best games. He threw strikes. He didn't let the crowd bother him."

It was Volquez's 10th win. He trails only Arizona's Brandon Webb in that category. Volquez leads the National League in ERA at 1.71 (1.56 better than Webb) and in strikeouts at 110.

All this points to Volquez possibly starting the All-Star Game on July 15.

"I hope so," Volquez said. "I don't know yet. If they give me the opportunity to start the game, I will."

Volquez liked the big stage.

"A lot of fans," he said. "Big city, New York."

Baker wasn't surprised Volquez handled the pressure.

"Everyone else was wondering about it," Baker said. "I wasn't. He's a very mature, poised young man. He did what he's done all year."

Jolbert Cabrera was the hitting star. He went 4-for-4 with a two-run double before leaving the game after sliding into second base when advancing on a wild pitch in the seventh inning.

He dislocated his left index finger and is headed for the disabled list. The bone came through the skin.

"It's sad to lose another shortstop," Baker said. "He made some great plays out there."

Cabrera had the key hit in the three-run fifth.

Edwin Encarnacion singled to start the inning. Corey Patterson sacrificed him to second. Paul Bako grounded out 4-3 against the drawn-in infield.

The Yankees intentionally walked Jay Bruce to get to Cabrera, who lined one into the left-field corner. Bruce scored from first base to make it 3-1.

Ken Griffey Jr. followed with a line single to right. Third base coach Mark Berry sent Cabrera. The ball beat him easily, but he was safe with a great slide and it was 4-1.

Joey Votto's 12th homer gave the Reds an early lead. Votto smoked a 1-1 pitch from Mike Mussina that landed well up in the seats in right.

"That was big to get us out to a lead," Baker said.

The Yankees tied it in the third. Melky Cabrera led off with a single. He moved to second on a groundout and to third on a Volquez balk. He scored on Johnny Damon's broken-bat grounder against the drawn-in infield.

Volquez had great stuff. His fastball was 93-97 mph. He was pitching with an extra day of rest.

"I think I had a little extra," he said. "I don't throw the four-seamer no more. I just throw the two-seam fastball."

But he pitched to contact. That allowed him to keep his pitch count down - he threw 103 - against one of the most selective teams in baseball. "I'm getting better," he said.

Volquez was really tested in the seventh. He gave up back-to-back, one-out singles to Alex Rodriguez and Hideki Matsui. But he got Jason Giambi to fly out before giving up an RBI single to Robinson Cano.

The crowd was chanting "Let's go Yankees! Let's got Yankees!" by then. But Volquez struck out Cabrera to strand the runners.

"I don't pay attention to those guys," Volquez said.

Edwin Encarnacion broke up an unlikely pitchers' duel with a two-run single in the seventh inning and the Cincinnati Reds beat the New York Yankees 6-0 on Saturday.

Encarnacion's two-out hit off Dan Giese (1-2) gave Cincinnati the lead and Corey Patterson followed with a drive to right off Jose Veras for his 100th career homer. Brandon Phillips tacked on a two-run single in the eighth.

Daryl Thompson worked five innings in his major league debut for Cincinnati, which has won the first two games in its first trip to the Bronx since it swept New York in the 1976 World Series.

Thompson and Giese locked up in the first matchup of pitchers making their first major league start at Yankee Stadium since Boston's Tony Welzer faced New York's Myles Thompson on April 22, 1926, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

The Yankees put at least one runner on in eight innings and stranded 12. They've scored just four runs in their last three games.

Bill Bray (2-0) followed Thompson with 1 1-3 innings, David Weathers got two outs and Jared Burton worked the eighth before Jeremy Affeldt finished the seven-hitter.

Giese made three relief appearances for New York and got the start Saturday when ace Chien-Ming Wang injured his right foot running the bases last Sunday in Houston.

He breezed through the Reds lineup early, getting through the first six innings in just 62 pitches. He was in good shape in the seventh, too, before his costly throwing error kick-started Cincinnati's big inning.

Ken Griffey Jr. led off the seventh with a single to center and Phillips followed with a grounder up the middle. Giese grabbed the ball and tried to retire Griffey but his throw pulled second baseman Robinson Cano off the bag.

Griffey and Phillips moved up on a groundout before Giese struck out Adam Dunn for the second out. Encarnacion then chased the right-hander and put Cincinnati ahead 2-0 with a sharp single to left.

Giese allowed four hits and three runs, all unearned. He threw 53 of his 75 pitches for strikes.

Thompson, who got lost on his way to the stadium, allowed the leadoff hitter to reach in each of the first four innings and a two-out walk in the fifth but escaped unscathed each time. He allowed four hits, walked four and struck out two.

New York loaded the bases with no outs in the second against the 22-year-old right-hander, who bounced back in a hurry. Thompson struck out Jorge Posada, got Cano to foul out to catcher Paul Bako and fanned Melky Cabrera to get out of the inning.

Thompson, who was acquired by the Reds in an eight-player trade with Washington in 2006, leaped off the mound after Cabrera swung and missed at strike three.

Derek Jeter went 2-for-4 for the Yankees, extending his season-best hitting streak to 10 games. Jason Giambi also had two hits.

Notes:@ RHPs Darrell Rasner, Joba Chamberlain and Mike Mussina are scheduled to start in New York's three-game series at Pittsburgh beginning on Tuesday night. Manager Joe Girardi said Giese would get another start in the Yankees' doubleheader against the New York Mets on Friday but he wasn't sure yet who would start the other game. ... The Reds placed INF Jolbert Cabrera on the disabled list with a dislocated left index finger to make room for Thompson.

The calls started just after Chien-Ming Wang was hurt last week in Houston - Bronson Arroyo's friends jamming his cell phone, wondering if he's going to be the Yankees' midseason rotation fix.

"Trade rumors," Arroyo said Sunday. "I know this is probably my best year in my whole career to be traded - we're not playing our best ball and my salary (nearly) triples next year. Me and (fellow starter Aaron) Harang, both.

"If we're not winning, it all depends on the owner of the club. How long do you want to ride something and see if you're going to win or do you pull out the big-dollar guys and do something?"

Arroyo, perhaps best known in New York as the Red Sox pitcher with the ball on Alex Rodriguez's infamous "slap" play in Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS, has been mentioned prominently in speculation in connection with just about any team in need of pitching. He is 4-6 with a 5.55 ERA for the Reds, who fell into last place in the NL Central with their loss to the Yankees Sunday. Arroyo is making $3.95 million this year and will earn $9.5 million in 2009 and $11 million in 2010.

While Arroyo sounds like he's on the fence about possibly coming to New York, he paid Yankees owner George Steinbrenner a compliment Sunday while noting that baseball owners are generally businessmen first.

"I don't know a lot of the other owners, but in my estimation, the only guy who didn't (care) about making money is Steinbrenner," Arroyo said. "He feels like at all costs he wants to win the World Series. When I look at John Henry and those guys in Boston, yeah, they want to win, but they're only going to push the salary so far. They want to stay under a certain line, so to me, they're businessmen first and baseball people second."

Arroyo pitched in Boston from 2003-05 and he says he's thought about the possibility of one day being a Yankee, but "it's a double-edged sword for me. When I first got traded, I hated the fact I wasn't going to play in a place that had that kind of rivalry and the expectations. I really liked that.

"But playing here for three years, you kind of settle into that and get comfortable where you live and not having stuff written in the paper about you off the field and not have so much scrutiny. I'll go wherever I go. I can make things work and be happy wherever. I get content in a place. Would I like to play for a contender? Yes. But I'm enjoying myself here."

And, Arroyo says, the Reds have the ingredients to contend. "In this division, we can't be in the cellar with the club we have," he said. "But we're (a long way) out and we have to make a move some time or people will start pulling parts off."

Hank Steinbrenner blames injuries for the New York Yankees’ slide from contention.

The Yankees are in danger of missing of the playoffs for the first time since 1993. Following four straight losses, they began Tuesday nine games back of AL East-leading Tampa Bay and five behind Boston, the wild-card leader.

“I’m not writing off this season,” the team’s co-chairman said Tuesday. “They’re trying hard to win. There’s only so much you can do. They’re not supermen.”

The Yankees are missing starting pitcher Chien-Ming Wang, who likely will miss the rest of the season because of a foot injury, and Joba Chamberlain, who hopes to return from right rotator cuff tendinitis. Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy have missed most of the season.

“I think it’s very simple, we’ve been devastated by injuries. No team I’ve ever seen in baseball has been decimated like this. It would kill any team,” Steinbrenner said. “Imagine the Red Sox without (Josh) Beckett and (Jon) Lester. Pitching is 70 percent of the game. Wang won 19 games two straight years. Chamberlain became the most dominating pitcher in baseball. You can’t lose two guys like that.”

New York also is missing catcher Jorge Posada, out for the year after shoulder surgery, and left fielder Hideki Matsui, out since June 22 because of a knee injury.

“It’s not making excuses. It’s reality. That’s part of the game. That’s clearly our problem,” Steinbrenner said.

Regardless of how this season ends, Steinbrenner thinks the 2009 Yankees will be the team to beat in the AL East.

“We’re going to win it next year,” he said. “If we need to add a top veteran pitcher, we’ll do that. We’ll do whatever we need to do. Next year we’ll be extremely dangerous.”

Estranged former Yankee Roger Clemens was "heartbroken" when his former team left him out of Sunday night's Stadium-farewell festivities, which included a video montage honoring the Bronx Bombers' greatest pitchers - but not him, a relative told The Post yesterday.

Clemens was sitting at home in hurricane-ravaged Texas, in front of a battery-operated television on his living room couch, when the team delivered a final crushing blow to its former star.

Clutching wife Debbie's hand on one side and mother-in-law Jan Wild's on the other, Clemens tuned in to his final team's last home game hoping for some recognition for helping win two World Series titles, Wild said.

But that Rocket never launched.

When the team played the video celebrating its greatest players at every position, the steroid-scandal-scarred Clemens was nowhere to be seen.

"Debbie and I held his hand while we watched the game, and he was heartbroken," said Wild, 70. "Not mad. He still loves baseball and the Yankees, but it was sad what they did to him."

Even Chuck Knoblauch -- who was also named in the scathing Mitchell Report on steroids -- was acknowledged on the big screen, hailed as the second baseman of the 1990s. Fellow steroid targets Andy Pettitte and Jason Giambi were at the Stadium in uniform for the Yankees.

Aside from Clemens, also noticeably absent from mention was former manager Joe Torre, who guided the Yankees to 12 straight playoffs and four World Series victories.

"A lot of great Yankees were not mentioned," the team insisted in a statement. "There was no slight intended, and perhaps both Clemens and Torre should have been mentioned as well as several others."

Clemens watched the telecast inside his mansion, which is still suffering the effects of Hurricane Ike weeks after it tore through Texas.

Clemens and his family have about 20 trees down in the yard and flooding in the den, and Sunday's broadcast didn't lift any spirits in the battered household, Wild said.

Yesterday, Clemens headed to Florida, where his son, Koby, is in an instructional league for the Houston Astros.

Wild said Roger has helped out around Houston as the city recovers from the hurricane.

She believes his claim that he never used steroids.

They wouldn't have treated Roger this way if he was a white guy.