My backyard neighbor Tom McNicholas sent me an e-mail the other day, and Tom — once a Brooklyn boy and lifetime Brooklyn Dodgers fan in the “Borough of Kings” — asked me if I knew about a book that was written on how my beloved New York Giants had stolen the 1951 National League pennant from “Dem Bums” from Brooklyn.

I laughed and told Tom that I was aware of the book — and as a matter of fact, the book’s author called this old Giants fan and member of the Society For American Research (SABR) a few years ago, seeking my words of “wisdom” in terms of a conspiracy theory.

I laughed it off as a stale joke for several reasons, which I explained.

Wall Street Journal writer Josh Prager’s book would be titled “The Echoing Green,” and he asked me if I believed that Jints manager Leo “The Lip” Durocher might have been up to dirty tricks?

I laughed and said that not only Leo, but Dodgers manager “Jolly” Charley Dressen, would have spiked their own grandmothers if Grandma was covering second base on a steal attempt.

Prager took me back to the frantic National League pennant race in 1951, which ended with the favorite Dodgers and the long-slumbering New York Giants in a flat-footed tie for first place.

They would square off in a three-game playoff series which would send the winner into a World Series with the mighty Yankees of Joe DiMaggio in his last season and Mickey Mantle in his first.

Allegedly, as the story goes, the Giants had set up a Wollensak telescope in Leo Durocher’s office in the Giants clubhouse over 500 feet away from home plate.

The telescope operator would sight in on a catcher’s fingers as he gave a sign (fastball or curveball), buzz it over to a relay station in the Giants bullpen, and a Giants reserve catcher would transfer the information to the batter by another sign — all in the matter of a couple of seconds.

But let’s go back to that mystical season of 1951, a season that led to a historic third and last playoff game at the old Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan.

The odds-on favorite Dodgers — with Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella and Duke Snider (all future Hall of Famers) along with Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo, Don Newcombe and Ralph Branca — enjoyed a 131⁄2-game lead over the Giants as late as Aug. 12.

But, thanks to the great pitching of the Giants’ Sal Maglie, Larry Jansen and Jim Hearn (who won 63 games between them) and a typical Durocher team — smart, mean and lean and with a 20-year-old rookie named Willie Mays in center field — the teams found themselves in a draw at season’s end.

The first game of the best-of-three series at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field turned into a surprising Giants victory, as Hearn outdueled Branca.

The playoff moved to the Giants’ old Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan for Game 2, and if necessary, Game 3.

I was in section 20 of my “home away from home” for the second game, and if the Giants’ espionage system was in full bloom, you could have fooled me and thousands of other Giants fans looking for the Jints to finish off the Bums.

Clem Labine, a hot-and-cold Dodger pitcher, was red-hot on that long ago afternoon and shut out my Giants 10-0.

If the Giants were helped by a sign-stealing system, you could have fooled thousands of Jints fans like me.

Along came Game 3 for all the marbles, and for Polo Grounds fans like me, the outlook was bleak.

The Dodgers led 4-1 in the Giants’ last gasps in the ninth inning.

After scratching out a run, the Jints had runners on second and third, but were down to their last out.

Dressen pulled Newcombe, who had run out of gas, and in came Branca to nail down a Dodger pennant.

Up stepped Bobby Thomson, and on Branca’s second pitch, Thomson repeated his Monday heroics by hitting another Branca pitch into the lower deck in left field of the old horseshoe-shaped ballpark.

The time was exactly 3:58 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 1951, and “The Shot Heard ’Round The World” was born.

Half of the National League fans in the stands that day wept, and the other half rejoiced as Giants announcer Russ Hodges kept screaming, “The Giants Win The Pennant!”

So back to the author of “The Echoing Green” — and in our conversation, I mentioned to Prager (a fine writer) that if “dirty tricks” were in fact afoot, the statute of limitations had long run out — so “fergged aboud it” as they say in Old New York.

But despite whatever evidence was turned up of foul play, it didn’t wash with the lords of baseball, and it didn’t wash with me for several reasons:

• I was in section No. 20 for Game 2, and the Giants were helpless in their attempts to hit anything Clem Labine threw — just as they were in the final game when Don Newcombe was throwing aspirins until he ran out of gas in   the fatal ninth inning.

• Dressen, as crafty as Durocher, was known for changing the catcher’s signals batter by batter.

• The best way to pick up a catcher’s digit signals — or whether the catcher shifted for a ball inside or outside — was if the team at bat had a runner on second base with a clear view of the batter’s box.

Whitey Lockman, the Giants’ fine first baseman, was on second base when Thomson came to bat that memorable afternoon.

• And last but not least, Prager couldn’t have factored in the blue haze that hung around the batter’s box at the closed end of the old Polo Grounds under Coogans Bluff in the late afternoon, because Josh the writer was not yet born.

That blue haze — from thousands of cigarettes and cigars smoked by fans long dead — made picking up the flight of a baseball a chancy proposition.

I know because fans were permitted to walk or run on Polo Grounds grass after each game, and as a kid standing in center field I’d look back to the home plate and wonder how an outfielder could pick up a baseball in the pea soup.

Prager’s book is fascinating and Dodger fans must love it, but “The Shot Heard ’Round The World” remains a Giant fan’s pride and joy forever.

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