Sports

Amar’e opening in Apple among greats

It isn’t just how well Amar’e Stoudemire has played across the first quarter of the basketball season, it’s how well he has acclimated himself to his new town, the way he has embraced everything about New York City. The Knicks forward is a marvel on the court and he has been marvelous off it, saying the right thing every night in the locker room moments after taking the city’s breath away on the floor.

He is confident without being cocky. He has swagger without looking ridiculous. Someone asked him the other night if he ever had put together a stretch like the one he has enjoyed the past few weeks, and he gave an almost perfect answer:

“Yeah, I have,” he said, smiling. “I’ve had my moments.”

And then: “But I’ve never had them here.”

Oh, man, does he get it.

“Guys never know what it means to play in New York before they play in New York,” Reggie Jackson told me in Tampa last spring. “They say they do. They think they know just because they play here a couple [of] times a year. They think they’ve got tough skin ’cause they get booed here in a different uniform. Just wait till you get booed in the white uniform, though, the home uniform. That’s when you’ll know.”

Reggie was talking about CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira then, about how both of them acclimated to New York in a way that too few athletes ever do, especially after taking enormous contracts. But as vital as those two were to delivering a championship to the Yankees in 2009 — hell, as vital as Reggie himself, the ultimate success story among New York Citry émigrés, was to the Yankees in 1977 — it wasn’t as if they were being asked to pick the Yankees up off the scrap heap.

Stoudemire was asked to do just that. As an outsider, someone with no history of attachment to the team. In it’s own way, that is a remarkable thing. Maybe it’s too early to rate him among the best New York athletic imports ever, but he certainly is heading in the proper direction to join a select core of elites, among them:

* Keith Hernandez, who joined the Mets at a time in 1983 when they had been reduced to an invisible joke in town, and who not only embraced the baseball possibilities the improving team provided but all the perks the city did, too.

* Reggie, who said they would name a candy bar after him if he ever brought his talents to Gotham, and then watched it happen exactly as he said.

* Mark Messier, who’s biggest accomplishment was the ’94 Cup, sure, but who two years earlier had altered the Rangers’ culture simply by showing up, embracing the city, and embracing the challenge that would yield such sweet spoils two years later.

* Dave DeBusschere, who for 42 years and counting correctly has been credited with being the missing piece of the puzzle for the Knicks teams that remain among the most beloved in any sport in any city.

* And, of course, the guy who started it all, a fellow named George Herman Ruth, whose appetites for home runs and everything else could only be sated here, who was the first athlete to understand all the possibilities of New York and explore every one of them.

It’s a good list. Stoudemire may look awfully good on it some day. Soon.

For a daily dose of Vac’s whacks, click http://www.nypost.com.blogs/vaccaro

WHACK BACK AT VAC

Joseph Gross: The Knicks have it again. No championship this year, but they’re playing exciting, winning ball with likable players. I haven’t talked Knicks with anyone around the water cooler in years for fear of ridicule. Now, the excitement is back.

Vac: The best sports stories are always the ones you don’t see coming. And I don’t know anyone who saw the Knicks as this much fun this soon.

Brian Moran: One more example of the NFL’s hypocrisy is not suspending Andre Johnson and Cortland Finnegan for their fight because, in their words, “It would put the Texans at a disadvantage in their upcoming game.” The real reason they weren’t suspended was the next game for the Texans was on the NFL Network . . . which is owned by the NFL!

Vac: The most appalling thing about sports is how often the people who run them think we’re all just plain stupid. Someday they’ll learn. Someday.

Joe Orofino: Mike, the textbook definition of inflation is paying more for the same goods and services. Carlos Pena, hit .196. The Cubs just paid him $10 million for a season. And yet, Cub fans wonder why that World Series trophy continues to elude them.

Vac: I just pity the poor Nationals; they couldn’t keep the title of “Worst Offseason Deal” to their own for more than a day.

Bradley Mortensen: Congratulations on your Bonnies’ victory over my Johnnies.

Vac: Man, I wanted to gloat about this all week but I heard from so many gracious St. John’s fans, I couldn’t. I’d just like to see the series continue, I think Franciscans versus Vincentians is a worthwhile match.

VAC’S WHACKS

* Scott Boras is still king of the agents’ hill for now. But Cliff Lee’s guy, Darek Braunecker, gave a clinic at Winter Meetings how to maximize leverage. Any time he wants to start repping ink-stained hacks, sign me up.

* Watching the pedestrian likes of Jayson Werth and Carl Crawford combine for a $268 million score last week with Albert Pujols waiting in the wings conjures an old chestnut from Joe DiMaggio. Asked what he would say to an owner if he were playing in these cash-crazy times, the Yankee Clipper replied, “Hiya, partner.”

* Seriously, anyone who writes or talks about sports for a living and insists on telling Rex Ryan to shut his pie hole should be sentenced to five years of hard labor listening to Art Howe and Joe Girardi.

* An early Christmas present from AMC, which is re-running “Breaking Bad” — which I had somehow overlooked the past few years — from the beginning on Wednesday nights/Thursday mornings, and so far it is every bit as terrific as I had been promised it is.