COMMON CENTS

Holdouts no longer have same stigma

WE HAVE come a long way, as far as sporting holdouts are concerned. Time was, there wasn’t a more direct way to become the most unpopular person in town than to hold out.

That was code word for greedy.

Code word for: Let ’ em get a real job and see how they like that.

There isn’t anything like that surrounding the miniature drama involving the Jets and Sam Darnold, and there shouldn’t be, because by all accounts it’s a procedural matter that will work itself out reasonably quickly (though these are the Jets, so ...).

But logic has never much played a part in a holdout in the old days. For most of the history of professional sports in this country, the owners were considered the good guys and the players the bad guys in anything resembling a financial dispute, no matter how small or big. That had nothing to do with logic or reason. That’s just how it was.

In 1937, Joe DiMaggio blossomed into a superstar in his second year as a Yankee. He hit .346 and hit 46 home runs and became a civic sensation in New York — a hero to thousands of kids, an inspiration to many who badly needed a diversion from the daily ravages of the Depression.

He believed he merited a sizable raise to $40,000 (from $15,000) for 1938.

Yankee brass was floored. “Mr. DiMaggio is in his third year and wants $40,000?” owner Jacob Rup- pert scuffed. “Why, Lou Gehrig didn’t make that much until he was with the club for over 10 years!”

Countered DiMaggio: “Then Mr. Gehrig has been vastly underpaid.”

So DiMaggio held out. He missed the start of spring training. He missed the exhibition games. He missed the start of the season. And the whole while, the Yankees were poisoning DiMaggio with the public. Declared Ruppert: “DiMaggio is an ungrateful young man who is very unfair to his teammates.”

Ultimately DiMaggio caved. “I had no choice,” he said, and it took a year before he was fully forgiven by Yankees fans who booed him mercilessly upon his return.

And that was the way it was for years. Brad Park held out before the 1970 season, asking for $40K while the Rangers offered half that, and the dispute turned especially ugly when the Rangers confiscated Parks’ skates. That, and public pressure, did the trick.

There was little sympathy when Lawrence Taylor held out before the ’83 football season after two superb years to start his career — that culminated with LT reporting for work then signing a million-dollarper-year deal with Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals of the USFL.

Really, the moment this might have all changed was before the 2007 football season, when Michael Strahan sat out training camp, spoke occasionally about retiring even though it was fairly clear he wasn’t ready for that just yet, then signed the week before the season opener and joked about his extended summer vacation.

Giants fans were unmoved, and in truth seemed to support the logic behind a veteran player not beating himself up in two-a-days under the tortuous August sun. And that feeling was only made exponentially warmer a few months later when Strahan played an outstanding game and helped the Giants beat the 18-0 Patriots in the Super Bowl.

Darrelle Revis probably benefited from that during his own holdout before the 2010 season, because though there were some fans who backed the Jets in that dispute, it was far more of an even split than anyone could ever have imagined even 10 years earlier.

So even if this silliness between the Jets and Darnold continues longer than it has to, fans have become more Zen to these kinds of things. As Revis himself pointed out after retiring last week: “It was just business.” It doesn’t feel like anyone has the heart (or the inclination) to argue that point anymore.