EQUAL TIME COME VI$IT!

Check your email for big-money ticket packages, even from opposing teams

NEW YORK summer baseball tales for the telling: 1) My buddy, Billy, 65, had never received any communication from the Yankees. Not a letter, not an email, not a phone call. Not even a pocket schedule.

He had been a subscriber to a partial Mets ticket package, but dropped it years ago after he’d been financially abused and physically inconvenienced — those do-I or don’t-I go? long rain delays followed by postponements or late, late starts — once too often.

In fact, Billy’s the fellow who in the past reported that just a few yards from a Citi Field right-field billboard pitching “$5 Subway Footlong” sandwiches, stood a concession stand that at the time sold Subway $5 Footlongs for $14.

“Five dollars?” said the attendant as if Billy had arrived on the Village Idiot Van. “Not here they’re not.”

Still, Mets ticket reps continued and continue to pursue Billy’s business via phone calls and emails, as if he were a lamb briefly gone astray.

So last week, it struck him as odd to receive a direct, personal email at work from the Yankees, as if perhaps his address had been passed between teams by a third party seeking its cut of business he didn’t solicit.

The email, sent by the Yankees and electronically signed by a team sales rep, was a come-on to buy tickets to the Mets at Yankees series in August.

Given that Billy had conducted no previous business with the Yankees, he was astonished to read, “And I want to make sure you have first dibs on this offer!”

Fascinating. Billy had gone from non-person to a Yankees ticket VIP in the time it took to press “send.” And still, how did the Yankees suddenly have his email address? The “first dibs!” offer: He must buy a minimum of 10 seats to the elevated Delta suite for one of two late August games. Cost per ticket $375, thus a minimum layout of $3,750. Soda and “domestic beer” — is that U.S. domestic or Bronx domestic? — included through the “middle of the fifth inning,” but a cash bar throughout.

Billy will pass on this offer. But he’s mighty flattered the Yankees, 13-year home of the “Empty Good Seats,” hold him in such high and sudden regard.

That was what Bud Selig must’ve meant when he said interleague play “is a gift to our fans.”

2) Last Sunday, with the Rangers and Mets tied 1-1 in the top of the third, Texas had two out and runners on second and third when Corey Seager surrendered early on a ground ball hit to second baseman Luis Guillorme.

Had Seager run the entire way, he’d have been safe, as Guillorme dropped it before throwing him out.

“He could’ve gotten his team a run, with some hustle,” said Ron Darling. At least a run. And he didn’t have to hustle, just running would have done it.

Gary Cohen: “If you’re Corey Seager and you just signed a 10-year, $325 million contract, doesn’t that up the need to run hard to first base, every time?”

Darling: “I think there is a way that certain players play, and it doesn’t matter if the contract situation changes. They’re going to play the way they play.”

Of course, there’s always the shame-shame solution. Had Seager immediately been yanked from the game ... But the game, as we know, has changed.