In his 31 years as a Yankees’ broadcaster, Michael Kay has created for himself a steady dilemma. He has painted himself into a corner that his fame and fortune cannot escape or reconcile.

On one hand, he wants to be respected, admired and most of all cherished by local sports fans despite his obvious, admitted thin skin and excessive tantrums in response to reasonable and even helpful criticism, as often heard on his weekday “The Michael Kay Show” which mostly features the sleeve-worn insecurities and shut-my-mouth conflicted interests of Kay and co-hosts Don La Greca and Peter Rosenberg.

But Kay’s greatest self-assigned dilemma is that he wants to be loved in exchange for his treatment of baseball fans, especially Yankee fans, like a bunch of myopic morons.

This past Saturday, as home run-or-whiff specialist Giancarlo Stanton did what he does — the least he can to help win ballgames — Kay did what he does.

He not only ignored Stanton’s latest flagrant disregard for running with even a moderate eagerness to reach first base — despite his $325 million contract, running to first base has become optional during the Brian Cashman/Aaron Boone Era — Kay was eager to excuse him by again playing his know-better audience as a gaggle of cornfed rubes in from Chillicothe, Ohio.

With the Yanks up, 4-1, and two on against the Twins, Stanton hit one deep to left-center then watched, then walked, then jogged toward first before realizing the ball was off the wall, when he ran to second.

During a replay of Stanton watching — not that it wasn’t immediately obvious — Kay excused Stanton, because, as did Kay, he was “surprised” it wasn’t a home run.

No fooling. He has been similarly “surprised” — mistaken — throughout his six years with the Yanks. And no one sees this then ignores it more than Kay who, again, wants to be loved by those he treats as morons.

But this one was different, a bit more creative.

Instead of even suggesting that Stanton too often puts the Yanks at risk of losing because he doesn’t do the very least he can — in the one-game playoff game lost to the Red Sox at Fenway Park two years ago, Stanton posed a double off the wall into a single — Kay excused Stanton with regional topography:

“That’s a home run in 26 other parks. The only ones it’s not gone in are Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Colorado and right here.”

Sure, otherwise Stanton would have had a triple!

Kay’s specious take last Saturday might have been relevant had it been Slugger Stanton’s first game in Yankee Stadium or if he’d previously been known to run rather than trot. But he doesn’t run to first in all 30 parks!

Stanton then left the game, headed to the dugout then another trip to the IL, this time with a leg injury due to “decelerating” into second base when he could’ve jogged in had he not jogged to begin with.

But Kay’s obfuscation of what we just saw fooled no one. Again. As reader Don Costello wrote, as this was Jackie Robinson Day, “Stanton might’ve confused it with Robinson Cano Day.”

Stanton has been impossible for Yankee fans who know and prefer winning baseball from expensive garbage ball impossible to root for.

And it’s a matter of caring, not knowing. Stanton and his team, as Kay surely was aware, had been badly victimized by his minimalism in the past.

In August, 2016, with his Marlins in the hunt for a playoff spot, Stanton was injured then disabled for a month when he presumed his fly to right would be caught.

So, late in a one-run game, he jogged to first. When the ball was dropped he turned it on for second. Too late. He was tagged out well short of the base, wrecking his groin with an awkward slide.

And Saturday, no wiser for the repetitive schooling, he continued to play Aaron Boone-indulged baseball, doing whatever it takes to miss a month or more by playing fundamentally unprofessional ball for $325 million.

And Michael Kay saw or reported none of it. Again. This time Stanton was injured because overnight, much to Stanton’s “surprise,” someone broke into Yankee Stadium and moved the left-center field wall back.

Reader Robert Swetits: “Kay couldn’t come up with anything better?”

Why should he? We’re just a bunch of morons. All aboard for Chillicothe!

The difference between Stanley Cup hockey and NBA playoffs basketball can be observed in the first minutes of play. There is a palpable buzz to the hockey — an eagerness to maximize every possession on behalf of one’s team — that’s no longer seen or sensed in NBA games.

Having watched Game 1 of Nets-Sixers, something significant was missing. It didn’t look anything like the way playoff games used to appear. There was nothing special, no all-in team offense or defense or activity of any kind to distinguish this game from a redundant regular-season game.

In fact, it was just another 3-point shot contest, with the Sixers taking 43 and making 21 of them, which also made them 20-point winners. It’s give-and-throw basketball — boardwalk Skee-Ball — no matter the time of season.

But it seems to grow even more senseless — even annoying — this time of year.

Tuesday, in the second quarter of Knicks-Cavs (the Knicks in their traditional black uniforms) Game 2, MSG’s Mike Breen and Clyde Frazier did note — almost angrily — a difference between regular-season ball.

After a foul call — and a good call — against the Knicks’ RJ Barrett, he could be seen griping to a ref.

Breen: “You can see that now, on every single call, in every game, the players are complaining.”

Frazier: “Yeah, you watch the NBA and that’s all they do now.”

Breen: “And the officials, especially during the playoffs, don’t want to be throwing out technicals, one after another. … But it has gone way overboard the first weekend of the playoffs and even the play-ins.”

Nice touch from SNY, Wednesday during Mets-Dodgers. Back from commercials, it showed moments-ago tape of a salute to a current U.S. sailor, the Dodgers’ bullpen standing and applauding.

To that end, I still feel the root cause of the booing Yankee Aaron Hicks hears at home began and has been sustained not so much due to his poor batting, but his decision to “take a knee” in 2020 during the national anthem. The fans in Yankee Stadium still eager to demonstrate mutual public self-expression.

MLB Network’s scrolled graphics — what a name for a network so deficient in baseball knowledge! — are so idiotic they appear as satire. Of late:

The 13-2 Rays “Lost back-to-back games for the first time this season.”

The Braves’ five homers vs. the Royals was their “first 5-homer game since Set. 2, 2022.”

Significant context is dead. Reminds me of a Henny Youngman gag: “When I was a kid I told my parents I wanna watch for my birthday. So they let me.”