Just after baseball’s traditional All-Star Game break — and the 15-inning marathon at soon to be “Old” Yankee Stadium in July, in which the American League continued its dominance over the National League — I got a telephone call from a longtime friend.

Joe Gressert, a former NYPD comrade and once-Yankee fan now living in Florida, opined that “The Grand Old Game” seemed to be upside down this year.

His adopted hometown teams in Florida seemed to be finally waking up and beating the big money clubs at long last.

A check of the standings and you would find the Tampa Bay Rays leading the Red Sox and Yankees in the American League East Division, and in the National League East, the Florida Marlins were holding their own against the talented and powerful Mets and Phillies.

My pal Joe was on to something when he concluded with, “Isn’t this the craziest season you ever saw?” — and “aren’t my Rays and Marlins the lowest-paid teams in baseball?”

I told Joe that he was correct in terms of the Florida teams’ rankings on this year’s salary charts, in a year where no less than 10 of the 30 clubs have payrolls over $100 million — led by the New York Yankees, with a payroll over $200 million.

But of course, money never guaranteed happiness — that’s just the way it is.

The Tampa Bay Rays, with a payroll of $43 million, place 14th and last on the American League’s payroll charts. The Florida Marlins have the lowest payroll in Major League Baseball, 16th and last in the National League at a paltry $22 million.

We concurred in the fact that if team standings were merely predicated on team payrolls, why play a season at all?

But, Joe continued with his theme that this is the craziest season he could remember. Joe Torre, now manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, was set loose by “The Boss,” George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees, after a marvelous 12-year career at the helm of the Bronx Bombers.

All Torre did was lead his team to 10 first-place finishes and four World Series rings, but Steinbrenner is from the “What have you done for me lately?” school — so Torre had to pack his bags.

And, “What’s with Barry Bonds?” Joe asked.

“The guy hit 762 homers, the most ever hit in a career by whatever means, yet all 30 Major League clubs, many salivating for a longball hitter, won’t touch him with a 10-foot pole.”

I agreed with my old NYPD pal that things in our game were a bit crazy this year, but mentioned that if he had the time, I’d tell him about an even crazier baseball season over 100 years ago.

When two retired fellows are talking baseball, you have that time to spare.

The year was 1905, and Major Leaguers were riding the rails from New York to St. Louis and points in between. Those boys were making from $1,000 to $2,000 in a year when the average American earned $559 per year.

Those kids played under baseball’s dreaded Reserve Clause and had no union to make their lot better — but the fact was, those kids would have played for just meal money, thanking God that baseball rescued them from a life on a farm in Iowa, a factory in Tennessee, or worst of all, a mine shaft in Pennsylvania.

1905 was the year John McGraw’s powerful New York Giants defeated Connie Mack’s great Philadelphia Athletics by winning a World Series in five games, thanks to the great pitching of future Hall of Famers Christy Mathewson and Joe McGinnity.

“Matty” pitched and won three games — all shutouts — and “Mac” won a fourth game in that series, also a shutout.

The only loss pinned on the Giants and McGinnity was a 3-0 Athletics win, all three runs off Mac unearned. Matty and Mac’s work stands the test of time. In that 1905 World Series, the Giants’ perfect pair emerged with a 0.00 earned-run average, a mark of pitching excellence that could never be toppled.

It was a time when professional baseball was still searching for its roots, and who cared if the lords of the game designated Abner Doubleday as the game’s creator?

After all, Teddy Roosevelt was U.S. president, largely based on the hill in Cuba he and his Roughriders never charged and captured — so why not honor Doubleday from Cooperstown, New York for the game he never invented?

But, that 1905 season was one for the ages, and where do I begin?

In April a New York City magistrate ruled that Sunday baseball was legal, and on April 30, a Sunday doubleheader at the old Polo Grounds between the Giants and the Brooklyn Superbas drew over 30,000 hungry baseball fans.

Professional baseball was being played in the U.S. from coast to coast, and major and minor league attendance records were being broken nationwide.

In the heat of a close 1905 National League pennant race that their Cubbies would lose, Joe Tinker and Johnny Evers of the double play combination of Tinker to Evers to Chance — immortalized by the great sports writer Grantland Rice — had a bit of a falling out.

Tinker and Evers had a fistfight on the field, and those teammates didn’t speak to each other for 33 long years.

Over in the American League, a Washington Senator owner in 1905 offered his hapless employees a $1,000 bonus if they finished higher than eighth place in that eight-team league.

The Senators finished seventh, and the poor owner wished he’d held the carrot stick higher.

Then on Aug. 8, 1905, allegedly mistaking her husband for a burglar, Ty Cobb’s mother shot and killed Ty’s father.

“The Georgia Peach,” still a teenager, would make his major league debut with the Detroit Tigers a few weeks later — and many said that his abrasive and cutting style was due in part to family tragedy and the fact he seemed to be still fighting the Civil War.

But no one in the game could deny that in Ty Cobb, the greatest hitter who ever lived, baseball had discovered an immortal.

America’s game was booming in 1905, and from coast to coast, no less than 31 minor leagues were setting all kinds of attendance records.

That is until Nov. 8, 1905, when the Pacific Coast League was playing out its long-over 200-game season.

The Oakland Oaks were playing host to the visiting Portland Giants that long ago afternoon and the weather was typical San Francisco Bay weather — cold and drizzly.

To add to the dismal day, both the Oaks and the Giants were fourth and fifth in league play and eliminated from league playoffs yet to come.

In those days, games were officiated by a solitary umpire and one of his functions was to announce starting batteries to the crowd via a megaphone.

On that never-to-be-forgotten afternoon — as gloom, chill and drizzle enveloped the park — and one lone fan who had actually bought the game’s only ticket sat in the stands, the umpire lifted his megaphone.

Aiming it at the best fan the Oaks ever had, he announced, “Dear sir, here are the batteries for today’s game.” 

Ace Parker can be reached at evjenpar@mailbug.com or 224-9956.