I’ll take Met late-season collapses for $1,000, Alex

KEVIN BURKHARDT wasn’t feeling it. It was Tuesday morning, he was tired and in a bit of a bad mood when he walked into SNY’s studios to host the Battle of the Broadcasters, a Met themed game show pitting SNY’s Ron Darling, Keith Hernandez and Gary Cohen against the WOR radio team of Howie Rose, Josh Lewin and Seth Everett.

“I really didn’t think about how I was going to act,” said Burkhardt, SNY’s Mets game-day reporter, “But when I saw the set and all the hard work that went into it, I knew I was going to have fun with it.”

Burkhardt, inspired by the colorful SNY set and childhood memories of watching game shows at his grandparents’ house, channeled his inner Bert Convy — he even had the old-school long, skinny mic — and turned the Battle into a Met trivia contest/yuk fest that would have made Gene

Rayburn proud. “I’m a goofball at heart,” said Burkhardt, “so I just acted like one.”

While it may not have taken long for Burkhardt to get into the spirit of the game, SNY certainly didn’t beat the clock putting it all together. As a matter of fact, the network’s senior vice president of programming, Gary Morgen

stern, said it took almost three years to turn the concept into reality.

“We didn’t have any expertise in game show production,” said Morgenstern. “It’s easy to say you want to do a game show, but we had to figure out who would play, the development of games and who is going to write the questions. We had to figure out what makes compelling TV in a trivia world.”

The job of putting the guests in jeopardy fell to Ken and Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau, who came up with some orange and blue questions ranging from easy (who started Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS?) to nearly impossible (what Met is the all-time leader in home runs in games started by David Cone). Even Met historians Cohen and Rose were baffled at times.

It all made for good fun, especially for Burkhardt, who admits the SNY crew didn’t give him any direction. “They just let me go,” he said.

The show, which will air on July 10, was all for a good cause, too, with SNY making a contribution to the favorite charity of the wining team (you’ll have to tune in to find out who won).

As for an encore, Morgenstern said, “we would love to do it again.”

RUTH’S FIRST OF MANY

The Daily News was just a year old when Babe Ruth joined the Yan

kees in 1920, and it didn’t take much for sports editor Marshall Hunt to convince publisher Joseph Medill Patterson to give him the resources to devote exhaustive coverage to the larger-than-life slugger. The News, of course, covered Ruth during the regular season, but Hunt also spent a lot of time with the Hall of Famer during the offseason, too, and the two men soon became fast friends, enjoying each other’s company on fishing trips as well as visits to illicit speakeasies and houses of ill repute.

So when Hunt decided to do a story on the nearly completed Yankee Stadium and its short right-field porch in February 1923, two months before the Stadium’s first official Opening Day, he took his friend Ruth along with him. The men cleared snow off a makeshift batter’s box and pitcher’s mound. Ruth took off his big fur coat, picked up a bat and drove Hunt’s fourth pitch into the right-field seats. “Sorry you ain’t pitching for the Browns,” Ruth teased. A construction worker retrieved the ball; Ruth wrote “New Yankee Field, Feb. 14 — 23, Babe Ruth” on it and handed it back to the construction worker.

The ball will go up for auction on July 12 at the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards in Baltimore by Goldin Auctions, and while the minimum bid is $50,000, company president

Ken Goldin says it could go for seven figures. “It’s the first home run ball hit at Yankee Stadium,” Goldin says. The ball remained in the construction worker’s family until the 1960s, when they sold it to Florida collector Joel Platt.

“I think this ball belongs in the Yankee Museum,” Goldin says. “I think the Yankees should buy it.”

JERSEY BOYS

New York undoubtedly has World Cup fever, and the remedy appears to be soccer swag. According to Fanatics.com, a leading online retailer of sports apparel, kits are flying off the shelves, and more merchandise is being shipped to New York addresses than anywhere else in the USA.

Through the group stage of the World Cup, New Yorkers are showing their colors by buying up red, white and blue gear in bulk and, not surprisingly, the Americans have the top-selling jersey in the Big Apple. What is surprising is that Clint Dempsey, Michael Bradley or Tim

Howard doesn’t have the best-selling player jersey. That goes to Dutch star Robin van Persie. Dempsey, however, picked up steam over the last week of the group stage — his was the No. 1 overall seller nation-wide over the final seven days of the group stage. Brazil’s Neymar, Mexico’s Chicharito, van Persie and Argentina’s Lionel Messi were among the other top-sellers.

Among nameless jerseys, the Americans have the best-seller, followed by Italy, host nation Brazil, the Netherlands and Germany.

And parents are making sure the little ones are decked out, too — city residents have bought almost twice as many kids merchandise than any other locale.

BAD MECHANICS? GET AN APP FOR THAT

Would you like a former major-league All-Star to teach your child how to pitch? Turns out all you need is an iPhone.

Scott Erickson, who won 20 games for the 1991 World Series champion Twins and finished second to Roger Clemens in Cy Young voting, has developed a new app called “Major League Mechanics” to help players at all levels develop, improve and fine-tune their game.

“My buddies kept asking me for help coaching their kids,” Erickson said. “I told them to check online to see what they could find. There wasn’t much, so I had the idea of doing it this way.”

Erickson spent the past two seasons as a minor-league pitching coach in the Indians organization, putting the app on hold. When he knew he wasn’t going to coach this season, he moved forward with the project.

“That gave me the foundation of being able to put this together,” Erickson said. “If I didn’t coach those two years, I never could have developed this app.”

Working with Tactile Media, a San Francisco-based production company, Erickson was able to turn his idea into a reality.

The app — which can be downloaded for free — features videos by Erickson showing six steps of pitching mechanics, pitch grips and tips for fielding the position. He has already enlisted six-time Gold Glove winner J.T. Snow to do the same for first base, and he has spoken with several big-league hitting coaches about joining him to teach the offensive side of the game. The plan is to have every spot on the field covered when all is said and done.

For those looking to take it to the next level, the app also offers a subscriber service for $30 per month that allows users to send Erickson five videos each month that he will personally break down and offer his coaching tips via e-mail.

Erickson believes Little League and high school players will get the most out of the app, which he expects to be available at some point soon for Android and other devices. “If they can develop better mechanics at an earlier age, they can be better down the road,” he said.