For Red Sox’ Chad Tracy, a small-world, full-circle Montreal moment with the Yankees’ Luis Rojas

NEW YORK — Among the noteworthy moments that have marked these initial days of Chad Tracy’s major league career, a heartwarming one came Friday: Yankees third base coach Luis Rojas made a point to say hello to and chat with the Red Sox’ interim manager during pregame goings-on. Later, before first pitch, they exchanged lineup cards at home plate.

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They had not seen each other in decades. But from 1995-98, Tracy’s father, Jim Tracy, was the bench coach for the Expos and manager Felipe Alou, Rojas’s dad.

The small-world, full-circle occasion had Tracy smiling wide a day later.

Baseball, man.

“Isn’t it crazy?” Tracy said Saturday before the Red Sox and Yankees were rained out at Yankee Stadium. “You go down the line 20 years and the connections are really cool.”

Back then, Tracy and Rojas were baseball kids living the baseball life. Rojas, four years older, spent time with the more grown children, hanging around fielding drills and batting practice and the like with Expos players. But he has distinct memories of the Tracy brothers — Brian, Chad, Mark — playing stickball in the parking garage underneath Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.

A generation later, they have their own families and their own careers, which crossed paths this weekend.

“My dad’s relationship with Felipe was incredible,” Tracy said. “He’ll tell the stories about him to this day about how much he learned from him. So that was cool — just to see him again and also know that our fathers had such a good relationship.”

Felipe Alou, whose paternal last name is Rojas but who went by Alou after an early-career clerical error assigned him his maternal last name, became a big-time influence for Jim Tracy, who went on to manage three major league teams.

Jim Tracy, in turn, of course, shaped Chad Tracy as a manager (and as a person).

In a way, then, Alou influenced Chad Tracy.

“He learned a lot from him, and I learned a lot from my dad,” Tracy said. “That was my dad’s first job in the big leagues, being the bench coach with Felipe Alou, so just to hear over time — even I remember conversations as a kid, how he spoke about him.”

Jim Tracy, 70, and Alou, 91, have long since fallen out of touch. Their sons want to get them on a call.

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“Awesome,” Chad Tracy said.

The Red Sox put reliever Jovani Morán on the 10-day injured list because of left elbow inflammation. They called up Alec Gamboa, another lefthander, from Triple-A Worcester to replace him.

Gamboa can “give us some length if we need it,” Tracy said.

“At this point, it doesn’t look [like Morán has structural damage or will need an MRI], especially if he continues to throw,” Tracy said. “But we’ll see what they want to do with him.”

Aroldis Chapman, managing a sore left hamstring, did some light stretching/agility drills under the careful eye of an athletic trainer Saturday afternoon. Then he played catch with a football, complete with pretty clean spirals.

He seems fine enough to avoid the IL, even if the Sox have to be careful with his leg.

“If it got to a point where we feel like we can’t do it, we won’t do it,” Tracy said. “We’re always talking with Aroldis on that too.”

Triston Casas’s surgically repaired left knee is effectively back to normal, but he still is working his way back from an abdominal strain that derailed his progress more than two months ago.

Is there a window in which he could help the Red Sox?

“I think so. I think that’s probably getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, given just where he is right now,” chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said. “But you look at what he’s done when he’s healthy, and he’s a guy that doesn’t really chase outside the strike zone, can hit the ball out of the park. Those are things that would be really, really helpful to us.”

Garrett Whitlock (left knee inflammation) threw 21 pitches in a scoreless inning for Worcester on Saturday in his first and potentially only rehab appearance. He walked two batters and gave up a hit, inducing a double-play grounder to escape a bases-loaded, one-out jam. “So long as he comes out and says, ‘I felt great,’ that’ll be the most important thing,” Tracy said . . . The Yankees called up Ali Sanchez, who played in four games with the Sox last year, to be their new backup catcher. Sanchez, 29, has totaled 50 games with five teams since 2020. Austin Wells went on the IL with cervical headaches . . . Most strikeouts as a reliever, major league history, entering Saturday: 1. Hoyt Wilhelm with 1,363. 2. Chapman with 1,357.

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