'Don't Take My F- - -ing Picture!'

Poor Jonathan Papelbon. Getting taken deep by a scrub from the Mets has him coming unglued. A shame he can't accept defeat like a man.

Talk about your sore losers!

Boston Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon took out his frustrations on Post photographer Anthony Causi Saturday night, hurling a towel at the lensman after blowing a save opportunity against the Mets.

Papelbon had just surrendered a two-run homer to backup catcher Omir Santos -- leading to a 3-2 Amazin' victory -- when Causi had the audacity to do his job and photograph the closer as he sulked in the Sox dugout in the bottom of the ninth.

Papelbon screamed, "Don't take my f- - -ing picture," according to Causi, before throwing his towel at him

It should be noted: Papelbon missed Causi.

"I guess he missed with two pitches that night," Causi cracked.

Ouch.

Papelbon ought to grow up and act like a professional.

Causi contrasted Papelbon's behavior with that of Yankee closer Mariano Rivera. The fotog recalled taking a picture of Rivera last month at Fenway Park just after the ace reliever blew a save against Boston.

"He knew I was shooting him, and he didn't say a word," Causi said. "A true champion realizes you got to take the good with the bad."

Christmas Firesale: NY Times Looks to Unload Share in Red Sox

The Old Gray Lady has transformed into a decrepit, wheezing hag desperately gasping for air. After noting Wednesday their ad revenue was cratering, word now comes they're so desperate for cash they're looking to sell their share in the Boston Red Sox.

The New York Times Co is trying to sell its stake in the holding company of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the discussions.

The sale, which could give the Times desperately needed cash as newspaper advertising revenue falls and its debt payments loom, could involve its 17.5 percent stake in New England Sports Ventures and possibly the struggling Boston Globe daily newspaper, the Journal reported.

New England Sports Ventures owns the Red Sox, the Fenway Park baseball field where the team plays, and most of the cable network that shows their games.

A New York Times spokeswoman declined to comment.

The Journal report comes on the same day that the Times Co reported a 20 percent drop in advertising revenue in November, compared with the same period last year.

But wait, there's even more good news. Dig this:

The Times previously refused to sell the Globe after former General Electric Co Chief Executive Jack Welch and former advertising executive Jack Connors reportedly asked about the possibility. At the time, they valued the Pulitzer prize-winning newspaper at $550 million to $600 million, the Journal said. Barclays now values the Globe at about $20 million.

How long until the federal government bails these folks out? The Democrats already own the media. They may as well just assume official ownership.

H/T Radical Ron.

Vampires 8, Rays 7

You just cannot kill these guys. As a Yankee fan, I'm still haunted by 2004. Welcome, Tampa fans, to our world. The folks in Cleveland know how you feel.

Good luck the rest of the way, you're going to need it.

It was over. We were getting ready to lower the storm windows and put baseball to bed for the long New England winter.

And then the reeling Red Sox dug down and found the lost magic of recent Octobers. They recovered from a 7-0, seventh-inning deficit to stun the Tampa Bay Rays, 8-7, in the fifth game of the American League Championship Series. It was as wild, wacky, and wonderful as anything that's happened at Fenway Park in this century. Which is saying a lot.

In the proud tradition of the Cowboy Uppers, Idiots, gypsies, tramps, and thieves who carried this team to a couple of world championships, the 2008 Sox staved off elimination with one of the great comebacks of October lore.

The Sox won in the ninth at 12:16 this morning when J.D. Drew roped a single over the head of Rays right fielder Gabe Gross with two on and two outs. It was the 11th walkoff win in Red Sox postseason history: The first in which the Sox trailed by seven runs in the seventh.

"I've never seen a group so happy to get on a plane at 1:30 in the morning," said Sox manager Terry Francona. "In the first six innings we did nothing. They had their way with us in every way possible. And then this place became unglued and we've seen that before . . . That was pretty magical."

The series resumes in St. Petersburg, Fla., tomorrow night with the Sox still trailing, three games to two, but the catatonic Rays have to be doubting themselves after watching their World Series tickets dissolve in Fenway's midnight madness. If you are a Rays fans, you have to worry. The young bucks choked the way few have choked before. They were inches from a clean getaway, a Fenway sweep that would have embarrassed the defending world champs and elevated the Tampa team to elite status. And they coughed it all up in three ridiculous innings.

I tuned out at 7-4 well past 11 pm. Outside of New England and Tampa, I doubt many on the east coast saw the game. This morning, everyone will claim they did.

When Red Sox Fans Attack

You'd think winning a couple of World Series would have made them chill out a bit.

Think again.

A rabid Red Sox fan on Cape Cod bashed a New York man on the head with a baseball bat after he was mistaken for a Yankee fan, cops said.

William Nestor, a commercial diver from Northport, LI, was returning with his family from a Fourth of July fireworks display in Falmouth, Mass., when he was attacked - allegedly because he had New York plates.

"The guy hit me with an aluminum bat," Nestor told The Post after returning home late last night. "I never saw it coming."

Nestor, who was stuck in heavy traffic after leaving the fireworks show at 10 p.m., said he noticed a group of hooligans harassing people in several cars.

But they seemed to be targeting cars with New York plates and cursing at them.

"They were yelling, 'Yankees! Yankees!' and 'F - - - New York' " Nestor, 29, said. "When they saw the plates, they came at me.

Apparently they're so stupid they don't realize how big a state New York is.

"I didn't even know the Yankees and Red Sox were playing" this weekend, added Nestor, who's not a particularly big baseball fan.

The victim was in his car with his wife and parents while his daughter, Kayla, 9, was in a second car with cousins and her aunt and uncle. Nestor's mom, artist Sybil Nestor, said her son asked the mob to calm down.

"William said, 'Hey, guys, I've got the family in the car, would you put a lid on it?'" his mom recalled. "They kept saying stuff, and then they started to approach the car, and William got concerned."

His dad, Bill, said William "stepped out to face the group, and an individual who he had not seen before just stepped out of the second rank of these clowns with a baseball bat and . . . hit him on the head."

The bat thug, identified by cops as Robert Correia, 20, allegedly whacked William's head, body and arms before Grandpa Bill could get into it.

"I'm 69 years old, but I was so pissed off . . . that I swore to myself he wasn't going to hit him a fourth time," Bill said. "I gave [Correia] kind of a football tackle . . . really hard, and got a chokehold on him and flipped him over."

The stupidity goes both ways, you might recall.

People, it's a game. Get real.

Pride of the Yankees Crumbles in the Clutch

We're all used to Alex Rodriguez coming up small in the postseason. Who knew his knees would also turn to jelly in the delivery room? Good Lord, man up already.

Alex Rodriguez passed out during the birth of his first daughter.

"The one nurse had a cold cloth on his head. The other nurse had the blood pressure on his arm. And my mother was like rubbing his back. And he is passed out on a couch. And I am there, in the middle of labor," Cynthia Rodriguez, wife of the Yankees star, said on an episode of the YES Network's "YESterdays" scheduled to air tonight.

"And really, I am not being paid much attention to besides the doctor and a couple of nurses," she said. "And he is there moaning. In between pushing, I am going, 'Honey, are you OK?' and 'Are you breathing? Are you OK?' "

Red Sox and A-Rod haters fans are sure to have a field day with this.

Meanwhile, speaking of Red Sox fans and on a more somber note, that psychopath who mowed down the Sox fan the other day is a really big fan of you-know-who.

The boozed-up Yankee fan from hell who ran over and killed a Red Sox supporter last week had a crush on Derek Jeter and a living room dominated by Pinstripe regalia.

A neighbor of Ivonne Hernandez, 43, who was charged with murder for allegedly running down Matthew Beaudoin in her Dodge Intrepid in Nashua, said the Bronx-bred fan loved the handsome shortstop.

Seems her interest in the Yankees was fleeting.

"When it comes to baseball, she didn't know much," the woman said. "The neighbors would give her hell. It was jokeable fun."

It would be a nice gesture, be it done privately or publicly, if the Yankees helped the Beaudoin family.

Psycho Yankee Fan Mows Down Red Sox Fan

Having an interest in the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, I just cannot fathom how out of control one has to be to take it so damn seriously.

Hopefully, this beast goes away for the rest of her life and is stuck in a cell with some Red Sox fans.

Ticked off by an earlier scuffle and taunted by anti-Yankees chants, a 43-year-old mother pulled out of a New Hampshire parking lot last week and rammed into one of the Red Sox fans taunting her, prosecutors said today.

The woman, Ivonne Hernandez of Nashua, had allegedly been drinking and was charged with reckless conduct, aggravated drunken driving, and second-degree murder. She was arraigned in Nashua District Court this morning on charges she used her car to kill Matthew Beaudoin, 29, of Nashua, who died Saturday of head trauma at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington.

Prosecutors would only say that an argument led to the attack. But a relative of Beaudoin’s said the scuffle escalated after a group of people that included Beaudoin saw a Yankees sticker on the back window of Hernandez’s car. They began chanting “Yankees suck!”

“I want her to rot in a cold jail cell for the rest of her life and remember every day the face that hit her windshield,” Faith Beaudoin, the victim’s sister, said in a telephone interview. “I want her to remember that she took a wonderful, kind-hearted gentleman. She has children of her own. How could she want to harm another’s child?”

Hernandez allegedly sped toward the group, striking Beaudoin and his friend Maria Hughes, 21, with whom she apparently had a fist fight shortly before in the parking lot. Hughes suffered minor injuries.

Hernandez, of Nashua, was arrested at the scene. She acknowledged she had been drinking and refused to take a breath-alcohol test, said Susan Morrell, a senior assistant attorney general. Hernandez said she had been in an argument with the group.

"She indicated to police that she wanted to scare this group of people. She thought they would get out of the way," Morrell said. "She never braked, and she accelerated at a high speed for about 200 feet. She went directly at this group of people."

The best remedy when anyone tells your your team sucks is to smile.

People really have to stop taking games so seriously.

Giraffe Named After Red Sox

In just a few short months, he'll be able to hurl insults with the best of them.

To honor the Red Sox four-game World Series sweep of the Colorado Rockies, staff at the Franklin Park Zoo on Monday named a baby giraffe "Sox."

In a statement, Zoo New England President and Chief Executive Officer John Linehan said the staff chose the name because of the female calf's long, lanky legs.

Other names considered were "Red," "Fenway," "Champion," and "Boston."

I guess Churlish Blowhard was taken.

So Long, Farewell, Enjoy Your Money

It's all about A-Rod.

DLTDHYOTWO, you greedy SOB.

Not content to make outrageous sums of money and never produce in the post-season, he decides to try and steal a little thunder from the Red Sox.

What a jerk.

“I got a call from Alex tonight, and he is going to opt out," Scott Boras, Rodriguez's agent, told The Post last night during Game 4 of the World Series. “He was just too unsure with new ownership talking about a transition where the organization is going right now. He is not sure what is going to happen with [free agents] Mariano [Rivera] and [Jorge] Posada, and if Andy Pettitte is coming back. He needs more time to assess where the Yankees are going in the future."

Yes, well those three will likely show loyalty to the Yankees and re-sign shortly. As for Rodriguez, if it was all about winning, he'd never have gone to Texas in the first place.

BTW, congratulations are in order for the Boston Red Sox, who are now 8-2 in their last 10 World Series games.