Don’t whine, Wilpons

Fred and Jeff Wilpon now are claiming to be genu inely wounded and highly insulted, complaining that so much of the world, especially those who write in newspapers, has unfairly turned against them in a rush to misjudgment.

Understood. I’d love to believe that the Wilpons & Co. are clean. I’ve got nothing personal against them, do you?

But they should, by now, understand what they’ve left the world’s logical folks to conclude. It’s not a vicious rush to judgment as much as it is an exercise in straight, single-digit math.

So come on, fellas, don’t take it personally; take it logically. If it were me, you wouldn’t believe me, either. For starters, after it was revealed that the Wilpons were invested in Bernard Madoff’s collapsed Ponzi empire, rumors flew that the Wilpons were so heavily invested that they’re in financial peril.

Don’t be silly, said the Wilpons. They publicly dismissed those rumors as exaggerated nonsense, insisting that whatever Madoff losses they suffered weren’t much, certainly not enough to alter the financial status, ownership and operation of the New York Mets.

Yet, a few months later, with a monster lawsuit aimed right between their eyes, they portrayed themselves as significant co-victims of Madoff, and announced that a quarter stake in the Mets is for sale.

Heck, Thursday, Fred Wilpon estimated his loss at the hands of Madoff to be “over half a billion dollars.” So then, which story is true? The first or the second? Or the next one? None of them?

Further, if we’re to understand that the primary business of Fred Wilpon and his brother-in-law and partner, Saul Katz, is business — not baseball — we have to ask ourselves how these career businessmen over several years reaped illogically high profits from their scores of Madoff accounts yet did not ask — or demand to know — why and how.

Was it enough that because Madoff was such a close friend that no questions be asked as to why his returns far exceeded — and even refuted — market conditions?

Unless, of course, they didn’t want to know. Did they not see the yellow and red lights? Or had they become accustomed to ignoring them? Or did they speed past with their eyes closed?

After all, how many other huge investments have Wilpon and Katz made on the blind? Would they advise that as a sound way to do business?

It’s not as if Wilpon had not previously funded a Ponzi. Before the Wilpons were known to be big Madoff investors and beneficiaries (and perhaps victims), they threw in with a hedge fund operator who turned out to be a crook.

A lawsuit led to a $13 million judgment against a Wilpon company to retrieve ill-gotten returns. That crook/Wilpon business advisor is serving 22 years in a federal prison.

Now if you and I were innocent, naive victims of such honest business — Wilpon’s company sank $30 million into this particular, non-Madoff misadventure — yet were forced to write a $13 million check to cover our innocence, doesn’t it stand to reason that our illogically high returns on our Madoff investments should be thoroughly and immediately examined?

Would we allow such a bad thing to happen again, only much worse? Or would we protect ourselves? To suggest that the world ignore such issues to conclude that Wilpon and Family are good people who merely were innocent dupes of an old and trusted friend is asking an awful lot.

Would Fred and Jeff Wilpon and Saul Katz do the same for us under the same circumstances?

So, even if careful handling and inspection of hundreds of millions in investments isn’t the Wilpons’ strong point, they still should take a moment to look at it from our world.

In our world, well, the dos and don’ts of high finance escape our sense of common sense. Take that the multibillion dollar federal bailout of Citibank. Surely that would prevent Citibank from paying the Mets $400 million in mad money over 20 years to name the team’s new ballpark.

Except it didn’t. When the new ballpark opened, there it was — Citi Field — the deal hadn’t changed. Unreal. Crazy. World gone nuts.

That’s the world we’re left to figure, fellas. Forgive those of us who are unwilling to believe that you didn’t know what hit you — that you’re total innocents in this Madoff mess — but the world we’re familiar with does not permit us. We’re only human.

Gray in hot water again

Is it time for Jim Gray to take an extended timeout? It’s not that trouble follows him, it’s more that he chases it.

Golf Channel pulled Gray off its PGA coverage from L.A.’s Riviera Country Club on Thursday, after he had an expletive-filled hassle with Dustin Johnson‘s caddie. Johnson had been hit with two strokes for nearly missing his first-round tee time. His caddie, Bobby Brown, claimed Gray tried to ask Johnson about it during the round, creating a distraction for his entire group.

Gray has become difficult to defend because he hasn’t broken his nasty habit of drawing attention to himself with indiscreet, excessive behavior — his harassing interview of Pete Rose at the 1999 World Series, his blowup with Mr. and Mrs. Corey Pavin before last year’s Ryder Cup, to name two episodes — which he seems to confuse with hard-hitting journalism.

Micheletti makes glove-ly call

STRONG call from MSG’s Joe Micheletti during Thursday’s Kings-Rangers shootout. With L.A.’s Jarret Stoll about to go, Micheletti sounded an alert: “He likes to shoot high to the glove side.” Zing! Stoll beat Henrik Lundqvist high on his glove side.

The Butner, N.C., penitentiary that now houses Bernie Madoff is the former home to another with New York baseball connections — Howard Spira.

Sherry Ross, Devils’ radio analyst on WFAN, always is prepared, always has something interesting to add — and about both teams. And she does so calmly and clearly, no shtick.

Barry Larkin has moved from MLB Network to ESPN, where he’ll be a studio baseball analyst. . . . CBS’s College Sports Network has been renamed CBS Sports Network.

NBC/Comcast, between Ch. 4 and Versus, has an estimated nine hours of NHL today, including Flyers-Rangers, Ch. 4, 12:45 p.m. Comcast, NBC’s new owner, owns Versus and Golf Channel and a piece of SNY, among other things.

ESPNews graphic, Tuesday: “Kansas 24-2, 2-1 in last week.” At ESPN, graphics are carefully proofread to ensure that they’re ridiculous.