So it’s Wednesday morning and it’s just another routine day – I’m tooling around my house on my Hoveround like always, making myself one of those healthy breakfast shakes made of Lucky Charms, chocolate milk and a half dozen Yodels, when I suddenly realize it’s one of our great holidays – St. Patrick’s Day. With drinking, and uh, even more drinking, what’s not to like? Everybody grabs a pint of Guinness or a green beer, sings “Dirty Old Town,” wears their “Kiss me I’m Irish” shirt and at least pretends to be of Gaelic persuasion. I, on the other hand, am German, so I throw on my “Don’t kiss me I’m German – that would be inefficient, emotional and unsanitary” T-shirt, and head off to work. I’m not the only one around these parts who wears a variation on the “Kiss me I’m Irish” shirt, though; here are some like-themed T-shirts seen worn by local athletes past and present on St. Patty’s Day:

“Kiss me – I’m not …

I thought if I just make it through the winter and finally get done with all that shoveling, the warmth of spring and the start of baseball will ease the pain and make the North Pole−like blizzards a distant memory, and it will be smooth sailing from there on out. But apparently I’m the Mets of people (or is it the Mets personified?) – they thought last year’s injury nightmare was behind them only to have it all start over again this spring, and I had that “here we go again” feeling, too. As soon as I dug myself out of the snow (and thought, “It can’t get any worse than this, can it?”), I had to spend a boatload of money (that I don’t even have) to get my broken-down, good-for-nothing car fixed (twice), and then Saturday’s hurricane hit, and my basement was submerged (I think I found Nemo) and much of the siding on my house was ripped off in the gale-force winds. Let’s face …

Baseball season is right around the corner (hey, three weeks is like four days when you’re my age, so twentysomething days is “right around the corner” to me), and after all the snow this winter, I’m ready. But here comes one of those “the old days were better” ramblings – they don’t call me Old Man Freier in my neighborhood for nothing (actually they pretty much just ignore me because I start every sentence with “Back in my day”). I was recently watching part of game five of the 1976 Yankees-Royals LCS that YES always seems to show and an episode of The Bronx Is Burning on MSG (the one about the 1977 LCS, which intersperses real highlights from the series), and it’s safe to say that baseball has changed since then. It may not have been better, but it was different. It’s lost a lot of its toughness and boys-will-be-boys attitude. In the 1976 game, the first pitch thrown by Grant Jackson right after George Brett …

I’ve come here to laugh with the Mets, not at them. Or to laugh with them and not angst over them. Or just to laugh. Please God, let me laugh. The season hasn’t even started yet and I pretty much want to kill myself already. After all of last year’s injuries, this spring the Mets have given us the Great Carlos Beltran Knee Fiasco, Frankie Rodriguez’s pink eye, Kelvim Escobar’s sore shoulder and now Jose Reyes’ overactive thyroid, which we’ve just learned will take two to eight weeks (years?) to stabilize before he can resume baseball activities, which means he’ll most likely miss opening day. There have also been the usual miscommunications and misdiagnoses. And Reyes and Beltran are linked to a doctor in Canada who’s doling out HGH. How frustrated and angry can one fan base get? Don’t you have to laugh? Maybe I’m being desperate here and ignoring reality, but isn’t it easier that way (ignoring reality is how I usually deal with things in …

We all know about the great athletes in New York sports history – Babe Ruth, Tom Seaver, Lawrence Taylor, Joe Namath, Mark Messier, Walt Frazier – and even the busts – Ed Whitson, Mo Vaughn, Roberto Alomar, Stephon Marbury, Scott Gomez. But what about the slightly-to-highly-above-average athlete? The kind-of-great but not all-timer? They may not have been Hall-of-Famers, but they were All-Stars, fan favorites, cogs on a championship team or maybe even just pretty darn good. They’re the little brother that didn’t hog all the attention. But they’re certainly worth talking about and remembering. So when do they get their due? Well, now they will. Here is a series of the not-quite-legendary in New York sports history.

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, the Mets were in the habit of trading away their young talent for, well, basically nothing. Amos Otis for Joe Foy. Nolan Ryan (and a few others) for Jim Fregosi. And they did it again when they sent Ken Singleton to Montreal (with Mike Jorgensen and Tim Foli). But this time, they …

The Knicks recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of their first championship, which got me to thinking – and yes, this is what I think about while cracking open my ninth beer of the night: New York-area teams have a seven-decade championship streak on the line this year. For the last seven decades (and eight out of nine) a New York team has played in a championship game when the year ends in a zero. Sometimes they lost, sometimes they won, but they reached the final game or series. Coincidence? Yeah, but so what? Let’s look back anyway.

The year 2000 was a bonanza. The Yankees and Mets squared off in the World Series, the Devils won the Stanley Cup and the Giants made it to the Super Bowl but lost to Baltimore (the game was played in 2001 but it was the 2000 season). In 1990, the Giants beat Buffalo in the Super Bowl (wide right!). The Islanders won the first of four consecutive Stanley Cups in 1980. …

The Mets are coming into spring training refreshed, confident and basking in the glow of the warm Florida sun. In fact they’re so confident they’re talking about playing in the World Series. They haven’t declared themselves the team to beat yet, though, but there’s still plenty of time left for that. Having confidence and setting high goals are great – no team, no matter how bad, is going to announce that they think they’ll finish in fourth place for the coming season – but you have to learn to walk before you can run. We’ve heard all the grand pronouncements and proclamations before, but it’s gotten them nowhere.

Jerry Manuel and the Mets have been talking about fundamentals here and there, and turning over a new leaf and wiping the slate clean, but mainly what we’ve heard so far in Port St. Lucie is: “We have enough talent to go the World Series.” Or “I’m the best pitcher in the division.” Or “We have the same core that …

Ok, so I’m at Penn Station in the men’s room the other day (and no, I wasn’t “loitering” or “hanging out” or “experimenting” – I was just “freshening up” before my train ride home), and this guy is holding a fancy Victoria’s Secret gift bag with a wrapped present sticking out of it, when he drops it on the floor as he’s zipping up. Now, of course, the floor in there is, shall we say, wet. In fact, it’s sort of like a pond. A pond filled with scum. And other things that you don’t even want to be stepping in, let alone dropping a fancy present in. The guy picks up his bag, gives it a wipe or two with his hand, splashing the run-off on himself now, and then goes on his merry way. Oh, that poor, poor girlfriend or wife. Little does she know the journey that her thoughtful gift has traveled. The only way she could find out, is if that schlemiel boyfriend of hers came home and announced, “Happy birthday, …

Daniel Murphy was once a third baseman. Apparently he wasn’t particularly good at that position, but that was his natural spot out on the field. When he was first called up to the majors in August 2008, the Mets threw him out in left field, as obviously they already had a third baseman (where was Murphy in 1970 when they needed him?). He learned the position on the fly. He wasn’t great, he wasn’t even good, but he wasn’t Todd Hundley-like bad either. After the season, instead of working on his outfield defense, the Mets had him play second base in winter ball. He wasn’t good; he didn’t have the footwork and quickness needed at that position, and that was the end of that experiment. He was given the left-field job in 2009, dropped a fly ball against Florida, and it was all bad (ok, really, really bad) from that point on. And finally, he was moved to first base, where he wasn’t really, really bad. He made physical errors. He made errors in judgment. …

The first-ever slam dunk competition was held this week during halftime of the ABA All-Star game at McNichols Arena in Denver. Julius Erving of the New York Nets wowed everybody with his running dunk from the foul line. Dr. J bested Denver’s David Thompson, Artis Gilmore of the Kentucky Colonels, and San Antonio’s George Gervin and Larry Kenon. As for the game itself (after some pregame entertainment by top-of-the-chart recording artists Glen Campbell and Charlie Rich), the league eschewed its former format of East vs. West, instead having the first place team at the break taking on a group of ABA All-Stars. The Denver Nuggets, coached by Larry Brown, scored 52 points in the fourth quarter to overtake the All-Star squad by a final score of 144-138. Thompson was named the game’s MVP, scoring 29 points, and Dr. J led the All-Stars with 23 points. In the NBA All-Star game, Dave Bing was named MVP (16 points, four assists) after leading the East to a 123-109 victory …

Pitchers and catchers are only days away, but, unfortunately, the Mets pitchers and catchers are mainly a bunch of back-end rotation guys slotted in behind Johan Santana and a group of backups to catch them. Omar Minaya seems to be going with a (broken, fragile) wing and a prayer for the team’s 2010 rotation. Not overspending on average-to-mediocre talent is all well and fine, but since they didn’t make a big play for the only number-two starter out there, John Lackey, they really should have tried to come up with a healthy innings eater to hedge their bet against all the injury-prone pitchers they’ll be going with. Even their depth is coming off injuries. Where is the creative, wheeler-dealer Minaya this offseason? Something akin to last winter’s three-way trade with Seattle might have been a nice tonic for them again (of course, that trade didn’t exactly pan out, but at the time it was looking pretty nice).

We can look into our crystal ball and make an educated guess as to how the seasons of Mike …

Super Bowl Sunday combines everything that’s great about our country: Drinking, eating 15 pounds of Buffalo wings, gambling and British classic rock. Why, oh why is this day not a national holiday? Here in New York, did we care who won? Well, if you had a wager on the game you did. Or did one of those squares things at work. So even if you don’t have a true rooting interest, it’s still hard to watch the game in a nice, relaxing manner when you’re yelling at the TV for the Colts to get a safety so they could end up with a score that ends in 5. The halftime show is always fun. The Who (or what’s left of them) rocked as only senior citizens can. Let’s give them credit, though, when I’m their age I’ll be lucky if can eat solid food and remember where I live. But the band is getting too rickety to smash their own equipment, so they have roadies do that …