It grows tiresome, redundant, writing about baseball in steady ruin.

To ignore the impossibly foolish and preposterously selfish play of the Braves’ Ronald Acuna on Thursday night would be to ignore what contributed to his team’s Game 1 loss vs. the Cards.

Even his teammates and manager were unable to dismiss it as anything other than inexcusable.

Acuna, benched in August for failure to run out what he thought was a home run — he turned a double or more into a single — led off the bottom of the seventh, Braves up, 3-1.

Acuna golfed one deep down the right field line, several yards fair, then gave it a stylish hop, jogging toward first while carrying his bat in anticipation of a nice, slow, immodest home run trot.

The ball hit the base of the wall. Acuna, who minimally should have been at second, stood at first. The Braves would not score that inning and lost, 7-6.

On TBS, play-by-play man Brian Anderson played it honestly, suspiciously, perfectly:

“I had my eyes on the ball. I don’t know if he busted it out of the box. But he ends up on first base.”

Soon, replays told the entire story. And analysts Ron Darling and Jeff Francoeur were left to wonder what, if anything to do with baseball, was going on in Acuna’s head in such a game.

We’d heard Darling wonder such dozens of times after such displays, no good answers to follow except the incomplete bromide, “The game has changed.”

Changed to become what?

This “style” of Major League Baseball has been going on for the past 20 years and attached to ESPN “Top 10” highlights, yet instead of dying an instant death as a matter of practicality — as a matter of winning games at the highest, most expensive, and ostensibly best-prepared level — it has proliferated.

And GMs, managers and even media have excused, indulged or ignored it.

It’s crazy. Screen doors on a submarine, the prison pole-vaulting team.

Senseless, self-smitten acts such as Acuna’s were recently seen throughout an MLB campaign to attract kids who once didn’t need to be attracted to baseball for such “fun.”

And those immodest scenes and messages — bat-flipping, self-adulation, home plate posing — were fully approved by Commissioner Manfred, as if our sports needed another bad-is-good, pandering steward.

In the ninth Thursday, Acuna hit a too-late, two-run homer to center. He stood posing at the plate, watching it before slowly, grandly, jogging the bases as if he’d just won the game.

Cincinnati radio voice Brennaman calls it quits

At 77 and after 46 years as the Voice of the Reds, Marty Brennaman has taken early retirement.

Brennaman was one of my Jersey Turnpike Guys, driving home at night, finding Cincinnati’s WLW on the car radio, gladly suffering the static and in-and-out fades to hear him and the late Joe Nuxhall make good, crisp, gimmick and shout-free calls laced with entertaining two-guys-talking-baseball (and life) exchanges.

Brennaman had his rough, tough, gruff exterior, but he was gooey on the inside — with a smile that meant it.

Andy “Satch” Furman, a cartoon character sports publicist from NYC who became a longtime character on Cincinnati sports radio, wrote Brennaman when he first hit town. He enclosed an audio cassette with a request for Brennaman to record and return a “He’s not in” phone answering machine message.

Waste of stamps and a tape.

But Furman’s machine soon starred Brennaman with, “Andy Furman is rounding third … and he’s out! Yes, he’s out. So please leave your message.”

All Hands on Dreck: Seems as if all Fox News and Sports employees were recently ordered to abandon their credibility to ceaselessly shill for the debut of Vince McMahon’s WWE pro wrestling shows on Fox.

Thus none will dare report or even hint at the countless drug and suicide deaths of McMahon’s massively muscled performers or how kids were sold gutter-vulgar acts and merchandise by Vince and Linda McMahon. Those crotch-pointed T-shirts carrying the message “Suck It!” were a big hit.

The chair-smashing staged violence has led to real brain trauma and the crippling of uninsured wrestlers before age 40.

What the heck? The Rangers scored six goals in their home opener Thursday. After each, MSG, for some reason, almost immediately cut to crowd shots, close-ups and wide shots, as if selling the game to those already in attendance.

What was going on in the crowd to inspire these shots? Much what you’d think and what you could hear: fans cheering and applauding.

As opposed to staying on the ice — providing a brief glimpse of the Winnipeg goalkeeper or coach — and for what they were worth, those crowd shots could have been file footage.

Rendon will be a prize

As frequently seen on TV, and for my Monopoly money, Nationals third baseman Anthony Rendon is the most complete, two-way, all-out player in the National League.

And off his 146-game season in which he batted .319 with 174 hits, 44 doubles, three triples, 34 home runs, 126 RBIs and 117 runs scored — all with Bryce Harper gone to Philadelphia — at the close of this postseason Rendon will be a free agent.

We keep treating fraud with more fraud, as if legalizing fraud is the answer let alone the cure.

College must be far more affordable in California than in the other 49 states given that it has approved legislation to pay college athletes (above the table).

We’d like to see even one college’s charter that even suggests winning ballgames — or even playing them — is essential to achieving a useful, legitimate collegiate education, which is what colleges are supposed to provide, right?

So now, if the NHL’s new marketing plan works, its alliance with the band Green Day to promote its latest album “Father Of All Motherf—ers” — that last word was replaced by an ellipsis in the NHL’s proud press release — fans will chant that word after losing their bets made right there in the NHL arenas.

Game 1 of Cardinals-Braves on TBS: 15 pitchers; 4:07; space allotted for that game before the start of Nationals-Dodgers on TBS, 3:30 on Friday.

Nice catch by TBS of spectator Chipper Jones making a nice catch of a foul ball in Game 1 of Cards-Braves.

Employing the ESPN/Alex Rodriguez how-to-win-games theorem, reader Mike Duesler reasons that the Rays beat the A’s, 5-1, in their wild-card game because they had an even-numbered lead rather than an odd-numbered lead, such as 6-1.

To watch ESPN the past few months is to become sick of the NBA before this season has even begun.