BEST OF WORST

THE PASSING of Horace Clarke earlier this week inspired one splendid and loyal reader, Eric Schnipper (aka @drschnip on Twitter) to make a suggestion: “Name the Horace Clarke facsimile for all New York pro teams: a guy … who played for the better part of a decade and epitomizes the era of ineptitude — and, if possible, bridged winning eras.”

(Oh yes, consider us like the dueling pianists at either Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans or your local Howl at the Moon — remember piano bars? Remember bars? Just sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and — voila! — you, too have an Open Mike subject!)

It is a thankless task, sure, because as we all discovered this week a lot of us feel pretty bad about having laid all that ailed the 1965-75 Yankees at the feet of poor Horace Clarke. But, then, little about sports is fair, right? There are always way more lousy teams than good ones, far too many nights you want to punch a wall or kick a TV screen than you want to admit to.

Plus, as most of those repentant Yankees fans also admitted this week: It’s the bad times that make you truly embrace the good. So herewith, one man’s roster of the faces of futility for Our Teams, and let us remember: as Horace Clarke reminded us this week, you can still be proud to say you rooted for them. Losing doesn’t make you a bad person. Honestly.

Mets: Well, since it was Dr. Schnip’s idea, we’ll go with his choice here, and it’s a good one: Ron Hodges. Hodges actually broke in as a third-string catcher on the ’73 Mets and contributed a few key moments to that pennant drive but his great talent was, amazingly, to be a part of every successive (and successively awful) Mets team thereafter, right on through 1984 when they finally got good again. No relation to Gil, Hodges hit .240/.342/.322 and came back for more every year.

Yankees: Yes, this one will hurt every bit as much as Clarke, but it is impossible not to remember that Don Mattingly enjoyed a sublime (and borderline-if-not-better Hall of Fame) career while toiling for some Yankees teams that made

Clarke’s clubs look like the ’27 and ’61 crews. Thankfully he got those 25 plate appearances in the ’95 playoffs to ease the sting a little bit.

Giants: Like Mattingly, they not only got to taste the playoffs late in the game but also got to share in the ultimate prize, Super Bowl XXI. Still, for many years it looked like the wonderful bookend careers of Harry Carson and George Martin were going to be wasted, playing for some downright rotten Big Blue teams from 1975-83 or so. For Carson, a nine-time Pro Bowler, that would’ve been especially hard to swallow.

Jets: Oh, my goodness, there are so many to choose from but the one I’ll go with is Richard Caster, who played at a reasonably high level from 1970-77, made three Pro Bowls and never once played for a Jets team with a winning record, let alone one that sniffed the playoffs (7-7 seasons in 1972 and ’74 were the best he got). He was the last favorite target of Joe Namath and finally did get a couple of playoff appearances with the Oilers later in his career.

Knicks: We’ll answer this one with the leap of faith that the Other Side of the bad-era bridge will eventually arrive, meaning we can look at any player since 2000 and give him this “honor.” And there are many candidates. But David Lee was a terrific player and a Garden favorite who played five solid years with the team, including his 2009-10 All-Star year when he averaged 20.2 points and 11.7 rebounds, and never played a single postseason game. Nets: What I like about this column is that I believe we are honoring Horace Clarke by surrounding him with so many good players. Derrick Coleman belongs here, though there are other candidates, because the Nets never won a playoff series with him on the team, even though he was terrific (if enigmatic) most of his time here. Hockey: For the Rangers, how can it be anyone other than poor Andy Bathgate, who played at a Hall of Fame level for 12 years and got a total of 22 playoff games (and no series wins)? For the Islanders: Let’s pile on and name John Tavares, just because it feels good to do that. The Devils? John MacLean hung around long enough to sip from the Cup, but he also was quite familiar with Mickey Mouse, too.

mvaccaro@nypost.com Bad teams can have great players, too