In honor of Phil Rizzuto, I am leaving Yankee Stadium before the game’s over tonight, trying to beat the traffic.

It’s sad, truly, when these legends leave us, because they are truly beloved for their personalities, for themselves, more than for their abilities as ballplayers.

Whitey Ford once told me a story about Old Timers day and the tradition of playing organ music while Bob Sheppard and the scoreboard screen list the names of all the Yankees who passed away the previous year.

Yogi Berra turned to Ford and said, “Boy, I hope I never see my name up there.”

Well, we hope so too, Yogi. These days are terrible. Worse, the line of greats gets shorter and shorter every year. Now only Yogi and Whitey Ford are left for those ceremonial first pitches before big games, and now Reggie and Don Mattingly are getting closer to the end of the introduction line on Old Timers Day.

I wrote a column about Rizzuto for The Journal News and LoHud.com tomorrow. I’d love to hear what you think of the passing of the Scooter, who not only was the subject of a Seinfeld episode, but participated in Meat Loaf’s huge hit, Paradise by the Dashboard Light. How many Yankees can say that?

I’m watching the Giants preseason opener. Carolina is shoving it right down the Giants throats on this particular drive, just running right over them.

Finally there is a stop. One play on which the Panthers are stopped at the line of scrimmage. Will Demps, who was the secondary tackler, leaps to his feat and starts to show off and strut.

Here we go again. I’m not saying that the Giants are the most guilty of all the teams that do this kind of crap after making the simplest play, but they are not the least guilty. And I don’t ever recall a Giants team of any era that has ever been more me-first than the last one.

So here we go again. It all starts from Michael Strahan and his jump shots and his muscle flexes and Jeremy Shockey and all his ball-spinning antics after every single catch, and Plaxico Burress, and so many others. But when the defensive backfield—which has been the Giants’ weakest link—does it to the nth degree, it’s just embarrassing. I’m surprised that Tom Coughlin puts up with it.

By the way, do you know which team doesn’t do nearly as much of this junk? The other one that plays in the same stadium, the one headed in the rigth direction, with a coach who demands and gets disciplined play from his players.

You know, they never used to do this stuff in New England, either. Then the Patriots began to dance and show off and you know what happened? They stopped winning Super Bowls. Hmmmm.

I just know that the Giants took an awful lot of conduct penalties last year, penalties that cost them yards, points and games. I just know that the easiest, quickest way to improve is to reduce unnecessary penalties. I also know that when individuals are more interested in themselves than the team, the team fails. It’s simplistic and old fashioned, perhaps, but it’s true. Absolutely true.

Yuk, yuk, yuk. John Daly is on the leaderboard at the PGA Championship. Hah, hah, hah.

When does this tired good ol’ boy, fake-everyman act stop? When do people stop tripping over themselves to congratulate Big John and to laugh at his antics?

The guy is a disgrace. He didn’t play a practice round this week, instead he was at a casino. Oh, ho, ho, ho. How funny. The guy doesn’t work at his game at all, doesn’t make any attempt to win or to be successful.

Cigarettes and diet colas. Hah, hah. Didn’t drink any water on this 103-degree day and all the humidity because he doesn’t like water. Yuk, yuk.

He has lost his PGA Tour card and gets in on sponsors exemptions because he rides the old drinker, smoker, Hooters act to those exemptions. But he is an embarrassment as an athlete.

And I don’t bet, but I’d be happy to make a friendly wager that by the end of Round 2, Daly won’t be anywhere to be seen. Maybe he won’t even make the cut.

I think Graeme Storm will drop out of sight, too. Speaking of that, did you see U.S. Open champ Angel Cabrera make a 10 on that par-3 today?

Meanwhile, the pick has to always be Tiger Woods if he’s in any tournament, especially a major. But if not Tiger, I’m going with David Toms. I think of that huge group of players who have won one major, many of them flukes, Toms is one of the few who will step out, like Retief Goosen did, and win a second major. This could be his week.

I’d love to see Sergio Garcia get his first major, and become the first European PGA winner since 1934. Could happen. I also want to see Ernie Els get back to where he once was and to add a third jewel on his hopes to achieve a career Grand Slam.

One more thing. When it’s this hot and sticky, can’t the Tour let the guys wear shorts. Do we really need to see Daly and others sweating through their pants?

If you had ever told me that, in this day and age, with all the highlight shows, with the internet and everything, that the all-time home run record would fall and I wouldn’t see the highlights for about 20 hours, I’d have said you’re nuts.

But that is what happened. Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s record on the West Coast late Tuesday and I just saw the highlight—on The Golf Channel of all places—around 9 p.m. tonight.

I didn’t really care to see it, or try to see it. Plus I’ve been busy with two interesting guys from New Rochelle who were batboys on the 1977 Yankees and gave me their reviews of ESPN’s “The Bronx is Burning” miniseries for a column I wrote for The Journal News and LoHud.com tomorrow.

But I am having some odd feelings about Bonds lately. I feel sorry for him, well, just a little bit. I think we have all piled on him because he’s a jerk, a big donkey, as a human being and as a teammate. That’s in addition to being a cheater. And, yeah, I know, I know, he’s never been proven to have cheated.

Please.

The guy cheated. He told the Grand Jury that he cheated. He doesn’t deny that he cheated. An entire book was written about all the dirty details of his cheating, and he didn’t argue it and he didn’t sue the pants off the authors. He cheated. He will never, ever, be caught by testing. But he’s guilty.

Yet I wonder. I wonder if, personality (and all the family transgressions) aside, we would look at him differently had he not cheated.

Imagine it this way. Bonds was averaging around 40 homers a year (Hank Aaron numbers) before he cheated. He was headed to the Hall of Fame anyway. He was one of the greatest players to ever have lived. If he hadn’t cheated, and say, instead of hitting those 73 homers in 2001, he’d hit only 43.

Then this year he might be passing Babe Ruth’s 714, and if he’d done that without cheating, he’d probably be on a pedestal. He’d probably be exalted.

You could say that the only reason he didn’t keep hitting anything like 73 homers in the subsequent years was that pitchers stopped pitching to him. But if he hadn’t juiced up and gotten so big and mighty, and hadn’t hit 73, then pitchers would have pitched to him those years, and maybe his totals would have been s imilar to the 46, 45, and 45 homers he hit the next three seasons.

And if not? If his home run totals dipped as if he were a normal human being in his 40s? So what? He’d have, what, 660 home runs like his Godfather, Willie Mays. He’s be one of the greatest players ever, one of the greatest home run hitters. We might still dislike him, but we’d respect him. And we’d look forward to that day in Cooperstown when he went into the Hall, unanimously on the first ballot, instead of with all sorts of vote controversy and disdain.

Sadly, Barry Bonds could have been an immortal by doing less.

Back from vacation.

I’m watching the Aug. 6, 1979 Orioles-Yankees game on YES. It’s the game on the night of Thurman Munson’s funeral, and it’s bringing about a lot of sad memories.

But it is not without some somewhat odd moments.

For example, did you notice there’s virtually no music or noise at the Stadium. How nice. How refreshing. When did some idiot decide that baseball fans need constant ear-pounding to enjoy themselves, and when did all the other idiots agree with the first idiot?

They said on the telecast that Dennis Martinez, the O’s pitcher, led the league with 204 innings as of that date. Just for fun I looked up today’s innings-pitched leader. Joe Blanton leads the majors with 167.1 innings on the same date in 2007. Think things have changed?

It’s always fun when Howard Cosell is wrong, and he used to be wrong a lot. In this case he’s selling what great prospects the Yankees Brad Gulden and Bobby Brown are. He says it so convincingly. Yeah, they turned out to be real Hall of Famers.

And finally, Ron Guidry will never make it to Cooperstown, but he was better in the late ‘70s than more than a few pitchers in Cooperstown ever were.