It’s now ritual, trying to apply common sense to the preposterous. You can try this at home. But it can’t be done. Consider:

The trouble with secrets is people. Once a second person knows, the secret is cut in two. Add a third confidant and the secret is just 33 percent confidential. And soon and so forth until there’s no keeping the lid on the dugout garbage can.

It’s reasonable to believe that with 45 or more folks within the Astros’ organization aware that the club was playing with a marked deck, another 45 or 450 people knew through first and second hand info.

Now what did at least a few of these inside-the-know crowd do? They bet the Astros early and often. To think otherwise would be unthinkable.

So add that one — inside trading — to all the side stories and side issues that get down to the gritty that forms the trending foreign word, integrity.

In November, an inside-info college football “thing” came and went with little media examination or suspicion. But something was rotten in Louisiana.

On Nov. 15, the visiting Marshall team defeated Louisiana Tech, 31-10. That game opened with Marshall a two-point favorite until two days before the game, when enough dough was played on Marshall to move the line to Marshall laying 4 ½ — a significant but unexplained movement.

Unbeknownst to the public, La. Tech planned to suspend three players for the game, including star quarterback J’mar Smith. That “privileged” info traveled — sifted — from the inside, logically carried by La. Tech insiders to bet the opposing, visiting team.

La. Tech didn’t release the news until Thursday night ahead of a Saturday game, well after the significant movement in the betting line. But such a stink bomb was tossed into the “Who Cares?” pile, as neither team is normally the kind that national TV covets and top-10 national polls include.

Another side to this Astros’ game-fixing — and isn’t that what they attempted? — is the absurd takes by high-profile media geniuses who regularly don’t know what they’re spewing about.

ESPN’s $10 million blowhard Stephen A. Smith concluded on the air that the Astros had to have cheated in the 2017 ALCS based on how little the Yankees’ offense produced. He even gave numbers as evidence.

Great take! But the Yanks’ offense had nothing to do with it. It was about the Astros swiping signs for its batters when they, not the Yankees, were at bat.

The there’s the outrage among those players who felt victimized by the Astros — selective outrage. Reader Pete Caterina: “Too bad the clean players weren’t as vocal against the PED cheats.”

But what team did not include the drug-aided?

Now we’re worried about beanball retaliation against those Astros on its insider-trading teams. Rob Manfred — the Lizard of Oz, he speaks with forked tongue — the story goes, now must act to preemptively stop it.

Huh? This is the same commissioner who claims home plate-posing and bat-flipping should be encouraged in kids! Has he not seen — or recognized — how many MLB brushback and beanball brawls are ignited by those who exploit baseball to demonstrate excessive self-regard? How many preen their ways to singles off the wall rather than doubles and triples?

How do we fix baseball, sick from neglect, TV money greed, a lack of fundamental foresights and even professionals who dismiss the importance of running to first base?

I don’t know. But I do know that it’s growing more difficult to return to a place you’ve never been. But that’s our little secret.

NBC scores big with its NHL coverage

NBC, even without Doc Emrick, had a strong NHL Sunday.

Within the Red Wings-Penguins opener, a between-periods feature told the story of “The Congo Kids,” two African kids adopted by a white family from Minnesota. Now the Seidl brothers, Simon and Sawyer, 13 and 15, are hockey-happy players in kids’ leagues.

Next, Mike Tirico was superb as the play-by-play caller during Bruins-Rangers. He was well-prepared, and made valuable and relevant parenthetical observations,

Funny, how for years hockey was considered a tough TV watch. Now, it’s reliably the best sport to watch. Mostly fast-paced games, with minimal artificial stoppages, rarely last beyond 2 ¹/₂ hours, overtimes and shootouts included.

Does anyone find this remarkable:

1. Gary Sanchez spent nearly six years in the minors, time when young pros are supposed to learn the intricacies of the positions they play, in Sanchez’s case, catcher.

But when Sanchez was promoted to the Yankees, he appeared only vaguely familiar with the position.

2. Now, 10 years after becoming a professional catcher, he’s still being taught the position. The Yanks have hired a catching tutor to work with him — that after near-daily Aaron Boone and YES Network testimonies to how incredibly improved Sanchez is behind the plate — spoken to scant evidence.

3. The Yanks allowed an accomplished catcher and pretty good clutch hitter, Austin Romine, to sign with Detroit.

And at the close of last season, Sanchez remained

Don’t forget about No. 63

Person of the Weekend was CBS’ poor stats graphic man or woman, charged with squeezing Tiger Woods’ name on the first page of the leaderboard, though he was tied for 63rd.

It’s not Woods’ fault, but with him out of the hunt, we hear and see so much more golf on TV rather than a gushing worship service. I enjoy Nick Faldo’s takes, but when Woods is in it, he turns to goo.

The national anthem — as screeched, strangled and otherwise tortured by Chaka Khan before the NBA All-Star Game — seemed another planned exploitation of an honor for transparent buzz-inducing self-promotion, this one a colossal failure.

Time for Pete Alonso to grow up. He wants to be “drunk on a float”? The “Let’s Go Mets” chant should include the f-word. Like it or not, kids look up to him. He doesn’t need to be the Mets’ Rob Gronkowski — and the Mets should let him know.

CBS provided a strange graphic at halftime of Saturday’s Indiana-Michigan: free-throw stats! Here we thought TV had decreed they no longer count.

NBA All-Star Game was pitched as an 8 p.m. Sunday start on TNT. It began at 8:40, but some lies have become more standard than surprising.

The University of Maine men’s basketball team is 7-19 and just might be suffering from communications issues. Two recruits are from Serbia; one each from the Ukraine, Montreal, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey, Latvia, England and Lebanon. Why Maine? The climate.