Eli’s place in history and the Amazin’ mess...

No. 10 of the Giants, Eli, showed up at No. 11 in an ESPN ranking of NFL quarterbacks the other day. So it goes for him. It seems like we have been having conversations about where Eli Manning rates with the star QBs of his sport for as long as he has been in town.

You can remember all the heat and light generated, years ago, when Michael Kay asked him on the radio one day if he considered himself an elite quarterback, and Eli said that you bet he did.

Everybody knows about his weird, Super-Bowl-or-bust resume.

We know about all the questions, most of them from New England, about how his history and Patriots’ history would be different if Tyree didn’t somehow glue a football to his helmet in Glendale, Ariz. one night.

And eventually there will be a great debate about whether he belongs in the Hall of Fame, though I believe that Eli has punched his ticket to Canton already.

Now he gets ready to start another season with the Giants, and start his 200th consecutive game.

In so many ways, he remains the biggest athlete in New York sports, on what is still the biggest game around here, which means the Giants, even as we hear that the quarterback of the future is in the house in the person of young Davis Webb.

And maybe Webb is the future, sooner than we all think.

The Giants, as presently constituted, aren’t great.

They weren’t great when they won two Super Bowls with Eli as their quarterback and Tom Coughlin as their coach. But no one else in the NFC is great either. The only other quarterback in the league who has won more Super Bowls than Eli has is Touchdown Tom Brady.

Eli isn’t Brady, even if he beat him twice in the big game. Isn’t Aaron Rodgers. Might make it to another Super Bowl this season, anyway.

That would make him a top-tier guy, right?

Okay, what does happen with the Cavaliers and the Celtics if the Cavs decide Isaiah Thomas is damaged goods and want to give him back? Because, let’s face it, the point of this trade wasn’t acquiring Thomas. The Mets lost Thor, and Jeurys Familia, and lost Matt Harvey and eventually lost Steven Matz.

Never had David Wright, because they haven’t had Wright for a long time.

Sometimes, despite some decent numbers, you get the idea that they never had

Yoenis Cespedes this season. They traded away Jay Bruce and they traded away Curtis Granderson and they traded away Lucas Duda and Neil Walker.

Now Michael Conforto, the true star of their season along with Jacob deGrom, has his shoulder come flying apart as he makes a swing, and there’s no way of knowing when the kid will be healthy again.

This is the one about how if you want to make the baseball gods laugh, tell them about your plans.

You also wonder how much money it would have taken for the Mets to spend their way or buy their way out of a nightmare season like this. The beauty of baseball, the unpredictability of baseball, was on display, and in lights, the other night when Doug Fister of the Red Sox faced the Indians in Cleveland.

Fister came into the game with a 2-6 record.

Had pitched into the 8th inning once since joining the Red Sox.

In his last start, also against the Indians, he’d lasted into the fifth, given up seven hits and five runs. Now he is at Progressive Field, and Francisco Lindor hits a home run leading off the bottom of the first.

Then Fister goes the distance after that without giving up another hit. I’m starting to listen to all this hoo-haw about Robert E. Lee, and really am starting to wonder how they didn’t save room for him on Mount Rushmore. Is there any way for the Jets to blame any of their problems on Carmelo?