A quick survey of the Yankees’ clubhouse — a small sample, admittedly — revealed that no one was familiar with the perhaps apocryphal tale from Russian history of Rasputin, the spiritual adviser to Czar Nicholas II, whose rivals fed him poisoned wine, shot him several times and then tossed him into an icy river, which he tried to claw his way out of before finally dying.

“Who?” the rookie Tyler Austin asked.

“Never heard of him,” said a smiling Adam Warren, who has a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina, but in business administration.

The Yankees entered Wednesday needing one more day of Rasputin-like survival instincts to keep alive their playoff hopes, which hovered somewhere between microscopic and nonexistent.

After stirring victories the previous two nights, the Yankees mustered another when — down to the final out to stay mathematically alive — Mark Teixeira blasted a game-ending grand slam to keep the Yankees relevant for another day with a 5-3 victory over the Boston Red Sox.