Sports

IN (MOSTLY) TOUGH TOWN, SOME CAN DO NO WRONG

WE’RE supposed to be this rough, tough, hard-to-please and harder-to-satisfy town, aren’t we? That’s always the question people have when they’re pondering whether or not they want to play in here, whether they want to sign on for big money and big glory: Can I play there? Can I make it in New York?

Even The Chairman admitted, all those years ago: If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.

And yet, when you really think about it . . . how tough are we, really? This weekend, like every other time a golf major has visited the area in recent years, the entire region nearly broke its back bending over backward to embrace Phil Mickelson. The affection is unabashed and it is unrelenting, and it goes against everything we’ve ever thought about ourselves as an exacting, exhaustively selective fan base.

Or does it?

In truth, it’s one of the great hidden secrets about New York City and sports: In our hearts, deep inside there somewhere, we really want to love. We want to shower with affection. Oh, we make you earn it. Not everyone gets the free ride from Day One that Derek Jeter has gotten.

A friend of mine once scoffed when I mentioned what a tough town New York can be.

“New York,” he said, “is Tuscaloosa with a skyline.”

And you know something? It’s true. We really do like to adopt. We like to dub athletes as can’t-touch beloveds. There are some who may really, truly, honestly enjoy torturing Alex Rodriguez, but I believe most Yankees fans wanted to embrace him from Day 1, a la Jeter, and . . . well, he just wouldn’t let them. But A-Rod is an exception, not a rule. Here are a few of the Rules:

The Yankee Captains — If you were to come up with a short list just of Yankees Untouchables through the years, think of the names you would have to leave off: Mickey Mantle (booed for most of the first 10 years of his career); Joe DiMaggio (booed after salary holdouts in 1937 and ’38); Reggie Jackson (he never was going to be more popular than Thurman Munson). Even Babe Ruth got himself good and booed toward the end.

No, it’s almost as if earning the job of Yankees Captain is what earns you a bullet-proof shield, only, in most cases, it seems as if the men brought their shield to the job first. Jeter never has heard more than a smattering of boos his whole career. Neither did Munson. Don Mattingly? He was revered from the start, admired throughout, all but canonized by the end. And Lou Gehrig

. . . well, if anyone ever booed the Iron Horse, they surely never admitted it.

Mike Piazza — Here is A-Rod’s great hope: If you remember what it was like at Shea Stadium for much of the 1998 season, you would have said it was more likely Piazza would sign with the Royals or the Twins than the Mets, so ugly was his reception for most of that year. And yet . . . Piazza did sign with the Mets, and from the moment he re-upped, he could do no wrong in the eyes of the Flushing faithful. As popular as David Wright is now, he still would be McGovern to Piazza’s Nixon if the two ever ran for Queens Borough President.

The 1969-70 Knicks/1956 Giants — This is where we show our stripes as being a sentimental town, bordering on the downright maudlin. We’re a tough town? Really? Then explain the way hard-bitten men break down like infants when they start thinking about Clyde, Dollar Bill and the Cap’n.

Watch them blow into handkerchiefs and sob liken the last chapter of “Old Yeller” if you happen to move the conversation toward Giff and Huff and Chuckin’ Charlie and the boys. It isn’t just that none of those old Knicks and Giants has had to buy their own drinks the past couple of decades; they have barely had to buy their own houses.

The 1986 Mets/1994 Rangers — Anyone who took part in Game 6 of the ’86 World Series — whether it was Keith Hernandez or Bob Ojeda or Ray Knight — has become the kind of lingering folk hero only sports heroes, specifically New York sports heroes, can be. And if you were to draw up a list of the 100 or 200 most popular New York sports stars of all time, it’s a fair bet that no fewer than four of those Curse-crushing Rangers — Mark Messier, Adam Graves, Brian Leetch, Mike Richter — would be safely within the Top 30, not bad for the fourth sport in town.

Tom Seaver/Joe Namath — Inextricably linked to one incredible calendar year and two sublime athletic achievements, they may be the two individual New York stars who have shown the kind of staying power and the kind of shelf life that others — Jeter and Eli Manning, to name two — will have a hard time living up to. No trade crushed the collective spirit of New York quite like the Seaver trade did in 1977. He was given a five-minute standing ovation at the All-Star Game less than a month later — at Yankee Stadium, of all places. And all these years later, Joe Willie still defines what always was the paradigm of cool: Women want to be with him, and men want to be him.

We may be tough, but we’re not that tough. As a sage woman we all know likes to say: Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.

Mike Vaccaro’s e-mail is michael.vaccaro@nypost.com. For a daily dose of Vac’s Whacks click on http://www.blogs.nypost.com/sports/Vaccaro.

VAC’S WHACKS

When you see poor Dontrelle Willis have to go onto the DL again, this time for an anxiety disorder, the first thing you think about were all the times the Mets seemed to be thisclose to making a deal for him a few years ago. And the second one is how well he would have fit in, with all his assorted maladies.

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I like “Nurse Jackie” just fine, though I have to admit I get a little weirded out watching Carmela — er, Jackie — get busy every couple of episodes with the guy who used to play Father Phil.

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I’m sorry, but

you can’t tell me the Yankees would have let anyone else in baseball wait around for

51⁄2 hours Thursday night except the Nationals, who the Yankees mistakenly thought had “Gimme” written in script across the front of the jerseys.

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Why do I have this sinking suspicion it’s going to be another long draft night for the poor, beleaguered crop of New Yorkers known as Knicks fans?