Diaz' Facebook profile pic: Only 602 saves short of Mo.

​With the new ballfields intended to replace those bulldozed five years ago to make way for Yankee Stadium: The Next Generation finally nearing completion — look, you can even see them now on Google Maps! — it's time to finally turn the page on the ugly battle over the park-stealing, $2.3 billion stadium project, right? Or it would be, if not for the fact that the convoluted financing of the stadium looks like it's going to have repercussions into the second Baldwin administration.

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"I'll take one of these, and throw in a yin yang while you're at it."

​Sick of waiting until after the Islanders-Predators game to get that tattoo of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes pissing on a Rangers logo? Now you don't have to wait! CNBC's Darren Rovell reports Long Island tattoo chain Tattoo Lou's is opening a parlor inside Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The pangs of regret you feel during the long drive home from yet another Islanders loss will be nothing compared to the feeling you'll get after spotting that fresh Kyle Okposo tramp stamp in the mirror the next morning.

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​So Nassau County held its vote on the $400 million New York Islanders arena plan yesterday, and for team owner Charles Wang things went about as well as ... it's tempting to say "as well as a typical Islanders game," but that'd be cruel. In any case, the final vote was 57-43% against funding a new arena (plus a new minor-league baseball stadium for an as-yet nonexistent Atlantic League team) with a 4% property tax hike, one that just might have been illegal.

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An Islanders arena campaign ad tries to warn of the consequences of a "no" vote, by using actual footage of the team's defense dissolving.

​Today's Daily News features an editorial on next Monday's New York Islanders arena vote, which is notable for a couple of reasons: One, it's a rare acknowledgment by the New York media that there is, indeed, a sport known as hockey; and two, it's an even rarer admission that there's another hockey team in the area in addition to the Rangers and that one in New Jersey that wins Stanley Cups every so often, a team that otherwise survives in New York sports lingo only in the archaic expression "Potvin sucks!"

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​If the last ten days in the life of Mets owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon were a baseball game, they would have been shut out, made 17 errors, and hit into a game-ending unassisted triple play. (That last feeling, admittedly, is one that they're already familiar with.)

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​The ever-epic Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report today closes out his epic series on Bruce Ratner's bizarre green-cards-for-financing scheme with a (wait for it) epic FAQ on exactly how the New Jersey Nets Brooklyn New Yorkers co-owner plans to take advantage of an obscure federal job-promotion program to save himself a jabillion dollars.

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​Poor dead George Steinbrenner doesn't even have a grave to spin in yet, and already he's being raked over the coals for his past sins.

First came Jim Dwyer's recounting of The Boss's legacy of egotism and abuse in today's Times, which recalls how Steinbrenner shook hands with Ed Koch on a lease extension at the old Yankee Stadium, only to back out when he decided he'd rather keep all his cable boodle for himself.

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Photo by Neil deMause

​Following the Mets' improbable come-from-way-behind win over the Marlins yesterday, the Shea Stadium Citi Field scoreboard blared the slogan "We Believe in Home Field Advantage," along with the news that the Amazin's now boast a sparkling 22-9 record in Flushing.

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​• BP (and dozens of other oil companies) were allowed to drill in the Gulf without getting required federal permits, "despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have." Also, scientists are saying the size of the spill has been underestimated, while BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward counters that it's "relatively tiny."

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​Proving the old line that the best way to find real news in the Times is to read the stories end-to-beginning, the Paper of Record offers up a classic buried lede in its article today about the upcoming renovations to Madison Square Garden. Round about the sixth paragraph, sportswriter Richard Sandomir reveals:

One of [Madison Square Garden's] properties, the Liberty of the W.N.B.A., will have to play home games elsewhere beginning in 2011. A possibility is the Prudential Center in Newark, where the Nets will play for two seasons before moving to their new home in Brooklyn.

That's home games for three years, as that's how long the $775 million-or-so plan to gut the World's Most Famous Arena and build a new one inside its shell is scheduled to take, in order to limit construction to summers and thus avoid inconveniencing the boy teams that play there in the wintertime.

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