KID GLOVES

Who has gotten off easy in New York?

SO I was listening to my man Costello on the radio with Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts the other day, and they brought up a fascinating subject: In a sports town where almost nobody ever gets a pass, who has gotten the biggest pass ever?

Benigno, no surprise, picked Todd Bowles, a particular favorite of his. Costello mentioned pre-2015 Terry Collins. Both are excellent choices. Bowles has gone 10-22 the past two years with what seems like a minimum of outrage. Collins — who, in fairness, drove a lot of Mets fans nuts even before his remarkable hiton-18 streak in ’15 — really didn’t start to feel any heat until his last two years.

(Though, in fairness, your humble narrator did call for his job in 2014, which I like to call the “Coughlin Corollary” since Tom Coughlin became a two-time champ and shoo-in Hall of Famer not long after I wrote a similar column about him. Maybe I should’ve fired Jeff Hornacek before Porzingis hurt his knee, for his own good …)

Anyway, it does strike me as a fascinating subject in New York, where we’re supposed to be the roughest, toughest, rootin’-tootinist sporting judges anywhere. But it does happen. And here’s a short list of odd untouchables who have somehow wandered our midst in the 20 years I’ve been part of that sporting jury, recognizing, of course, that this is a subjective spectrum, that criticism is often in the eye (and the ear) of the beholder (and the beholdee):

Garth Snow: Again, this is only a free pass if you don’t count the voices of thousands of devout and devoted Islanders fans who have been begging for years there be a change at the top, no more so than this year when his do-nothing instincts allowed the season to die on the vine in what should’ve been an all-or-nothing pitch to John Tavares why he should be an Islander for life — especially since the Islanders are scheduled to be actual Islanders again in a few years. But, then, that’s what happens when you are the clear ninth-of-nine team in a nineteam market when it comes the media scrutiny and attention.

Chris Mullin: And, yes, hat in hand I admit to being at the front of that line. It’s one of the reasons I hoped (and wrote, originally) that I hoped Mullin would never get the St. John’s job, because if we accept that all coaches and managers are hired to be fired, you’re playing with a harsh bit of fire when you hand the keys over to a beloved icon (the primary reason I’ve always been glad Don Mattingly never managed the Yankees). Mullin enters Year 4 with players still leaving in droves, with no continuity — and without the veteran ingame assistant he desperately needs to help with game-day Xs and Os. Still, the media (again, point to me at the front of that line) keep waiting on sunnier days in Jamaica. And waiting. And waiting.

Rex Ryan: Actually, what happened to Rex was similar to what happened to Collins. For years he was kept out of the line of fire by personality (Ryan’s humor, Collins’ regular-guy-ness) and so a few losing seasons seemed to get masked or covered in camouflage. And then, like Collins, it seemed to turn on a dime. I suspect both men would laugh if it were ever mentioned to them they were given one of those free passes. I was there though. I saw them. And handed a few out myself.

Phil Jackson: Just kidding. Nobody’s pass was revoked faster than ol’ No. 18’s.

Billy King: Like Snow, he was helped by being a secondary team (in Snow’s case, a tertiary team) in the home market. And, yes, I heard from quite a few Nets fans when the Celtics Trade From Hell was announced who (to their credit) pronounced that deal a disaster from the second the ink was dry on the press release. It just seemed to take a while for everyone else to catch up — and it feels like some of us in Pile-On Central have been trying to make up for that ever since.

David Wright: And this predates the injuries that have rendered him a ghost on the very team for which he served as Face for so long. There was a time when Wright seemed fast-tracked to Cooperstown. It might be too simple to label the turning point the moment he was hit in the head by a Matt Cain fastball in 2009, but it does seem a decent line of demarcation. But Wright’s “pass” should also serve as a lesson and a blueprint for others who work New York’s vast sporting room: Fans and media folk alike are human beings. If you’re a decent person (and Wright is every bit of that) with a genuineness to your character (again, a full supply), you may not get a free pass but you will get the benefit of the doubt, and sometimes more than once, and that can start to feel like a free pass after a while.