Yankees not only ones to have bad night Tuesday

TUESDAY, after Giancarlo Stanton’s second shot off the wall in Fenway, ESPN’s Matt Vasgersian delivered the news: “That ball is a home run in 11 of the 30 MLB parks.”

Reader/pal Vinnie Vesce: “So I guess that means it would not have been a home run in 19 of the 30 MLB parks. Fascinating.”

This MLB season topped last year’s and the year before’s as the worst-played and managed in a continuing, mindlessly self-destructive series, a consistency of dissolution seen in the first inning of the first postseason game.

Stanton hit one deep to left, then, as if endorsing Rob Manfred’s marketing plan to appeal to kids through acts of risky, counterproductive conceit, he stood near home and watched his “home run” become a single rather than a double (and perhaps causing more). But such inexcusably bad play has become standard — while ignored or excused.

On ESPN, which destroys every sport it touches, Vasgersian explained that Stanton “is satisfied with a single!” He and Alex Rodriguez then rationalized that the cold weather may have cost him a home run. After all, said Rodriguez, “It’s a game of inches.”

But the ball hit midway up the wall. Had it missed by an inch, how did that excuse Stanton from running to first base in the first inning of a one-game playoff ?

But TV now demands that we suspend belief of what we see — what TV shows us — to believe what we’re told. Thus, Stanton’s inexcusable failure to do the least he could do was indulged as if he didn’t know better.

Radio proved a poor option. John Sterling — enacting his 32-year self-promotional, one size-fits-all and rarely accurate home run call — hollered that Stanton had just blasted a “Stantonian home run!” out of Fenway. We’d excuse him as a matter of age — he’s 83 — but he has been similarly fabricating home runs since Steve “ByeBye” Balboni in 1989.

As Sterling began to ask aloud why Stanton was on first base, his faithful apologist, Suzyn Waldman, tried to rescue him by reporting that the ball hit off the top of the wall, which, for those forced to take their words for it, was not true.

We’ll leave the rest to reader Scott Wolinetz :In 1978, Bucky Dent was nearing second base when his three-run homer cleared the wall in that one-game playoff in Fenway. Monday, “Stanton was barely out of the batter’s box when his ball hit the wall.”

Traditionalists. What do they know about baseball?