Reader John Santello has a practical, applicable take on matters: “I have no problem with baseball being a business, a shamelessly greedy business. I hate MLB’s pretense that it isn’t.”

This column for years has chronicled MLB’s now-epidemic abuse of both its customers and the public trust through such “greater good” and “fan-friendly” innovations as interleague play and the sale of its Sunday schedule to allow ESPN to “flex” big-market Sunday afternoon games to 8:08 (ET) starts.

You may recall that “Bottom Line” Bud Selig introduced interleague baseball with a lie, calling it “a gift to fans.” It was a gift to team owners, who immediately jacked ticket prices to those games.

Late Sunday night baseball — never before scheduled because it was an absurd, indecent time to start games — was pitched as akin to the Saturday Game of the Week. In truth, it was — and remains — a greed-ugly money-grab.

Having sold to ESPN the right to late-switch Sunday afternoon games often attached to “Family Day” promotions and ticket sales, MLB’s message to fans remains: Get lost, take a hike, go to hell.

But Monday came word that MLB and ESPN have hit their own exacta. The Sunday, Sept. 20 Yankees-Mets game — an interleague game sold by the Mets as both a 1:10 p.m. start and a postgame fun-for-kids date — has been switched to 8:08 p.m.

The Mets’ directive with the revised starting time — just a small matter of a seven-hour bait-and-switch — still notes the good news: “After the game, all kids 12 and under will be able to run the bases in the Mr. Met Dash.” Talk about a dark comedy.

Perhaps the New York City Administration for Children’s Services will send agents to interview those parents or guardians who would have their kids up and running the bases at roughly midnight, with school the next — or that — morning. Then again, if Children’s Services investigators worked late on a Sunday night, it would cost the city at least time-and-a-half.

As for a Yankees-Mets late Sunday nighter as a top-TV-market game, the Nielsen ratings people will be unable to gauge how many New York-area folks ostensibly watching the game have fallen asleep by the sixth inning.

Naturally, heartless, soulless treatment of the game’s original and sustaining lifeblood is not what commissioner Rob Manfred wants to hear or read about. But on the long-shot chance that he actually cares more about people than TV revenues — his predecessor, Selig, celebrated his tenure only in terms of money — here are a couple:

Reader Chris Warren: “I now have to explain to my 7-year-old son, with whom I have been discussing this game for four months, that I can’t take him and his 12 friends (half Mets fans, half Yanks) to their first big rivalry game. We’ll have to find something else to do.

“No refunds, no exchanges. Boo Mets. Boo Baseball.”

Reader Michael Cundari: “I purchased five tickets to the game back on July 12, believing that the 1:10 game time was perfect for the needs of my family. Now, I’m really steamed. I planned to attend the game with my 86-year-old mother and my daughter-in-law (who has to get up early for work).

“This is the height of audacity. … I’ll think twice before I purchase another ticket.”

Ah, that’s the ticket: Stop buying tickets! The only thing MLB responds to — does back-flips for — is money. Don’t spend another dime on anything attached to New York big league baseball; MLB next will make extra nice. But you’ll keep buying. Manfred, as did Selig, knows that.

Surely, then, Manfred has no trouble sleeping at night, especially Sunday nights while ESPN’s games are on. He might even be asleep through the seventh-inning stretch.

By the way, this Sunday’s MLB/ESPN bait-and-switcher is Giants-Pirates. What was sold as a “Kids Pirates Lunch Bag” day game was moved to 8:08 p.m. Many Pittsburgh area schools start the next morning. Who loves ya, baby?

ESPN’s bait & switch the channel

Given that MLB has sold its common sense and common decency as per bait-and-switch late Sunday night games, it’s not as if the “flipped” side offers any upside. Unless you tuned in to hear and see nonstop nonsense, ESPN’s Sunday night telecasts are insufferable.

Curt Schilling? Fellow New Englander John Quincy Adams, as a senator from Massachusetts, in 1804 wrote of a colleague’s 2½-hour oration as “the puerile perseverance with which nothings were accumulated with the hope of making something by their multitude.”

Although ESPN operates under the notion that we can’t live without Schilling’s endless examinations and exhumations of every pitch and pitcher, Cruel & Unusual Curt should be on the agenda of the next Geneva Convention.

And with all the talk, graphics, ESPN promos and irrelevant, intrusive computerized strike zones atop live play, it’s slim wonder that paying attention to the game becomes a pro forma problem for ESPN and us.

Sunday’s Angels-Royals game ended in the 10th inning, when Kendrys Morales lined a too-high-to-catch hit to left, scoring Ben Zobrist from second. John Kruk, over a replay, expertly told us why Zobrist was able to score:

“Because he was aware of where [shortstop Erick] Aybar was playing, he got a great read. He didn’t have to worry about Aybar catching it.”

Try again, John. There were two outs. Zobrist ran the instant the ball was hit. Even a simple, standard game-ending play was lost to ESPN, Worldwide Leader in Sports.

Wilpon’s $700M relief plan

Some pigs are slaughtered. Others are slaughtered, then cured. This week, it was reported Fred Wilpon has landed a $700 million bank loan to refinance the debt of the Mets and SNY.

If the terms dictate that he pay, say, 8 percent interest on that loan, he would turn it down as usury, loan-sharking!

Yet, when Bernie Madoff guaranteed highly dubious, if not impossible, payouts of 12 to 15 percent, Wilpon jumped in with both fists, so much so that he now is moved to refinance $700 million in debts.

How to Make Friends and Influence People — Immediately: After his two home runs, Wednesday, Greg Bird, a Yankee for less than a week, told YES’s Meredith Marakovits, “I have the best teammates in the league.”

Reader Jim Gluckson has one for Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau: Before Jacob deGrom pitched to Travis d’Arnaud, was there ever a battery, both last names starting with a lower-case d?

Lookalikes: John Thomas Kelsey submits Rangers exec Glen Sather and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.