Remember when Philadelphia was that quaint town sitting on the other side of the Turnpike, non-threatening the way a younger cousin is non-threatening? Philly was the Big Five, and a cool basketball building called the Palestra, and not so long ago was 100 consecutive seasons in the four major sports without a title, between the ’83 Sixers and the ’08 Phillies.

Philly was the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, and artery-clogging cheesesteaks and salty pretzels.

Philly was Rocky Balboa and Hall & Oates. Philly was the whiners from “thirtysomething” and the spooky cops from “Cold Case” and Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington teaming up to beat the hell out of Jason Robards and Mary Steenburgen.

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It was hard to work up a good hatred for Philly. The Phillies were the first team to ever lose 10,000 baseball games. The Eagles were always good for a January swoon. The Sixers? Sure, they stole Dr. J away from us, but the last time the Knicks won an NBA championship, the Sixers went 9-73. That’s NINE and SEVENTY-THREE. In a baseball season, that’s 18-144. That makes the ’62 Mets look like the ’27 Yankees.

Boston was our backyard beast. Boston was our neighborhood rival.

Philly?

Other than Rangers fans who have detested the Flyers ever since the old Broad Street Bullies days, did you ever even harbor a mild dislike for Philadelphia even five years ago? The Mets had plenty of other rivals through the years: the Braves, the Cardinals, the Cubs, the Pirates. Chuck Bednarik may have famously laid out Frank Gifford, but Giants fans always got far more riled up for the Cowboys. The Knicks had rotating wars with the Bulls and the Heat and the Pacers and even the Celtics once upon a time. The 76ers were an afterthought.

And now?

Now Philadelphia is Michael Corleone, underestimated for so long, who in December came out of the bathroom blasting away and hustled Cliff Lee away from the Yankees, who yesterday announced it had “settled all family business” by getting Nnamdi Asomugha to sign his mellifluous collection of vowels and consonants to the bottom of a contract, stealing him clear away from the Jets.

It caps four years of relentless smackdowns and beatdowns (save for the Yankees’ defiant refusal to let the Phillies repeat in 2009), which began in ’07 when the Phillies erased a 71⁄2-game Mets lead in the NL East in the bare space of 17 days, which continued on the last day of the 2010 NHL season when the Flyers beat the Rangers for the last spot in that season’s playoffs, which raged out of control when the Eagles made that impossible comeback on the Giants last season at the Meadowlands.

The perverse beauty of the Asomugha deal, of course, is the same thing that made the Lee signing so delicious for Philly. Not only did Philly outwit and outmaneuver the big wallets of New York and the big swagger of Dallas both times, but by adding both the star southpaw and the standout corner it not only hurt the New York team they beat directly for their services — the Yankees and the Jets — it also badly battered the other teams in town — the Mets and the Giants — who now have to deal with monsters inside their own divisions for years to come.

It’s staggering. It’s astonishing. Broad Street prevails over Broadway, Geno’s reins over Katz’s, Independence Hall rules over Radio City Music Hall. How did this happen? How could this happen? Well, give a New Yorker truth serum this morning and even he would have to admit:

Well played, Philly.

Well played.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com