Hey, New York: Stop spreadin’ the boos; it’s old

It could have been much, much worse for the Astros.

Getting booed by barely 10,000 fans in early May inside Yankee Stadium? Please.

I hate to break it to a national sports world that increasingly thrives on daily negativity, controversy and division. But the Astros being booed isn’t news.

It’s also outdated, a little sad and very silly.

You remember when Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Joe Kelly threw a 96 mph fastball behind the head of Alex Bregman and taunted Carlos Correa by pouting inside Minute Maid Park?

Benches cleared. Kelly was suspended eight games (five after appeal), and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was suspended for one contest.

That was news. That was relevant.

That was Kelly almost hurting — or ending the career of — an Astros player in 2020 because of something that happened in 2017 and ’18.

“Joe Kelly threw a ball behind Bregman’s head on 3-0 on purpose,” Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. said last July. “Not only did he take it upon himself to, I guess, send a message, but he wasn’t even part of the team during that (2017) season. We knew coming into the game that he likes to go off script. It is what it is. It was done unprofessionally. What he did after he punched out Correa was unprofessional. Running into the dugout was unprofessional. So it is what it is.”

We still remember the start of a hate- and tension-filled spring training last season in West Palm Beach, Fla. — before the coronavirus pandemic paused everything and forced a Major League Baseball team out of everyone’s conversation — when it felt like the Astros were being ripped apart minute by minute and hour by hour.

When it soon became clear that the hate was spreading out of control and some were dangerously indulging in their anger.

“Everybody in here is getting death threats,” Correa said in February 2020. “It feels like when you open social media these days, it’s the norm. You don’t see positive comments anymore. You just see, ‘If you come to New York, you better watch out. Your wife better watch out.’ They start talking about raping, killing all this stuff.”

Former Astro Josh Reddick at the same time: “I put a post about my kid rolling over for the first time, and I look down and see, ‘I hope your kid gets cancer.’ It really makes me want to see that person in person and see what they would do when you put your face to their face. … It pisses you off.”

This isn’t to make light of any of the mean, nasty things that were screamed at the Astros on Tuesday night during a 7-3 loss or during Wednesday’s 6-3 loss that left them with a 15-15 record.

But Dusty Baker’s remade Astros faced significantly more pressure to prove themselves last season playing in empty stadiums. They also were booed and berated in Oakland, Calif., and Anaheim, Calif., when this 2021 season began in April with smaller crowds because of coronavirus restrictions.

It’s been 15 months since A.J. Hinch and Jeff Luhnow were fired. It’s been 14 months since MLB commissioner Rob Manfred acknowledged that the sport considered stripping the Astros of their 2017 World Series trophy but that he lacked the power to punish the players.

“Quite frankly, I’m tired of talking about it, to tell you the truth,” Baker said last July, when the Dodgers were in Houston.

“This is big news, but it’s over now.”

Hinch received an extended standing ovation when he returned to Houston as Detroit’s manager in mid-April.

There’s little left of the 2017 and ’18 Astros, in uniform, on Baker’s current team. Which means that making homemade cardboard signs, blowing up inflatable trash cans and wearing a costume to an MLB game in 2021 looks like something straight out of junior high.

And shouldn’t this have been more of a national story this week?

“More than half of the (MLB) teams were getting signs,” Reggie Jackson told NJ Advance Media. “So if you want to blame somebody, blame whoever you want to blame.”

The ex-Yankee recently joined forces with Jim Crane’s Astros.

Jackson, who hit 563 career home runs and entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993, doubled down on what many have said since Manfred singled out the Astros.

The real truth is more complicated than what often passes as the truth.

“In the new game of baseball, you run into the video room and find out some reason why you didn’t hit rather than staying on the bench and rooting for your teammates,” Jackson told NJ Advance Media. “Sooner or later, you go, ‘Damn, if I watch this close enough, I can figure out what’s coming.’ That was going on. And I’ll say it again: If there are 30 teams in the league, more than half were doing it.”

The Astros clearly screwed up in 2017 and ’18. Hinch has consistently acknowledged that fact, and he was the franchise’s most important voice at the time in the dugout and within the clubhouse.

But as long as the random boos keep coming and the desperate national media tries to create something from nothing, these new and different Astros feel more and more like Houston’s baseball team.

Again.