I only have one thought crawling around my head as I get ready to head out to cover a more fun brand of baseball between the Staten Island Yankees and Hudson Valley Renegades. It’s this:

-Why whenever the Mets beat up on the Yankees does a professional broadcaster such as Howie Rose turn into such a complete homer? Suddenly, a man who’s one of the most respected play-by-play men in the business feels the need to exceed in his calls making silly references to how “most Yankee fans have left” when their team is down by seven runs in the eighth at The Stadium. Well, duh Howie! Let’s not be too obvious about how important it is for the Amazin’s to beat up on the Yanks’ Double-A pitching version in Game One of an overhyped Subway Series between two overrated teams. Heck. I bet if I put together a team of high school All-Stars, they could’ve batted around against what the Yanks sent out there for the first game in the Bronx.

Has anyone even seen the pitching match-ups for this dreaded series? Tonight when it shifts to Shea for the rest of the weekend, the Yanks send out veteran scrub Sidney Ponson for his second tour of duty against Pedro Martinez. That’s about as fair a fight as Mike Tyson in his prime against Michael Spinks.

Don’t try telling Mike Lupica, who always takes cheapshots at the Yanks whenever he can while pushing Mets propaganda in the Daily News whenever possible even if they’re the bigger embarrassment in this town. He probably still thinks the Yankees play in the weaker division when at last check the Rays were for real and even the Orioles are playing a respectable brand of ball having taken a couple from the Cubs at Wrigley when nobody had beaten the majors’ best team there in a while.

Let’s be real. Before the WFAN Mets homers wave their pom poms if their team does what it should this weekend with very favorable match-ups, the only reason they’re in the hunt is because their division is mediocre. The Phillies have comeback to earth and the Marlins are remembering who they are. On paper, you’d still have to say the team in Queens should wind up winning the NL Least.

Heck. If you went and looked at what’s happened to the senior circuit since Interleague, only two teams boast great records and they both reside in the NL Central which happens to also be the best division in the league with the Cubs, wild card leading Cardinals and Brewers all playing well. Even the Pirates have improved but don’t tell Lupica that they entered Friday only a game and a half worse than the NL’s highest payroll.

It doesn’t count. Only the BIG BAD Yankees do when they lose to much cheaper teams which have more chemistry and better pitching without three of their starters hurt. See. Facts sometimes elude this columnist who continues to write the same recycled columns.

But again, what would you expect? This town has officially become a circus. While there’s a much more glorious event going on over in London at the All England Club with Wimbledon, the New York papers continues to obsess and overanalyze every move in what basically is a meaningless series. Will it mean much in late August and early September? We already know the answer.

But the way Rose and Lupica act regarding these games is like some sort of holy war. This is exactly what the late great George Carlin- the best comedian ever- was talking about when it comes to this country. The press have lost their minds.

Oh. The Yanks and Mets do play in New York where everything is heavily scrutinized. But they’re about as much rivals as the Giants and Jets. Unless these teams start fulfilling lofty expectation$ and meet in the World Series daily, there’s not much of a rivalry to speak of no matter what propaganda the talkies on WFAN feed you.

The one time they met for all the marbles, the Pinstripes were the superior team winning their last World Series.

You want old fashioned rivalries? You have to go back to the 50′s with the Dodgers and Giants occupying Ebbets Field and The Polo Grounds.

Maybe one day, the papers will come to this realization because our ballclubs are flawed and not that good.