Major leagues love to hold night court

BASEBALL commis

sioner Rob Manfred, like Bud Selig before him, makes self-inflating claims that are demonstrably untrue.

Selig spoke some whoppers. Interleague baseball, he declared, “is a gift to fans” when it was a gift to team owners who raised ticket prices to interleague games.

Then there was the one in which he claimed he personally examined ticket pricing at new Yankee Stadium and found all seats to be “affordable.”

Last week MLB announced that on Aug. 20 the Cardinals will play the Pirates from the Little League complex in Williamsport, Pa., an ESPN Sunday night game to start at 7 p.m. — to avoid accidental pictures of sleeping Little Leaguers — instead of the normal abnormal Sunday 8:10 start.

The shameless baiting and switching of tickets sold to Sunday games — later announced to be late Sunday nights for ESPN money — has led to mountains of heartbreak — cancellations of community bus trips, wrecked plans for family outings — and the greed-ugly ridicu- lous — Mets’ “Family Sunday” come-ons for kids to run the bases with Mr. Met beginning near midnight, and games that should’ve been played in sunlight instead are played in Northeast and Great Lakes sub-freezing, nighttime weather.

And Saturday 1 p.m. starts, especially featuring large TV market teams, are growing scarce.

World Series games end after more than half the U.S. population — not just kids — is asleep.

Still, Manfred, in a statement released by MLB about this particular Sun- day night ESPN game, said, “MLB’s greatest responsibility is to ensure that today’s youth become active participants in our game as players and fans.”

Yeah, who loves ya, kids?

If “Get your New York sports, here!” SNY and its “SportsNite” show want to be taken seriously, both have to stop treating New York sports fans as dim wits.

Last week was a crazybusy one for all sports. Yet the lead story on “SportsNite,” every night, was how the Mets made out in their spring training game.

Though it is unlikely such conspicuously managed news on behalf of SNY’s partner MLB team will make SNY one more viewer or Mets’ fan, such a formula has a greater chance to condition viewers to turn away, stay away.

And what of the credibility of SNY’s anchors? Thursday night, with so much fresh local basketball, significant NFL moves and local NHL news to report, Eamon

McAnaney was forced to report that the big, lead story was the Tigers-Mets game in Florida, which had ended seven hours earlier.