The old scorebook doesn’t lie. Right there, for the game the Yankees played against the Chicago White Sox May 28, 1974, it has Elliott Maddox playing center field and Bobby Murcer playing right field. The game marked Bill Virdon’s shocking switch of Murcer, the successor to Mickey Mantle, from center field to right.

Murcer had received no warning or even a hint that the change was coming. The manager had not said anything about it that day or before that day. Murcer learned of it when he walked into the Yankees clubhouse at Shea Stadium and looked at the lineup card posted on the door. He had been the Yankees center fielder for five years and was nearly a third of the way through his sixth season in that hallowed spot in the Yankees defensive alignment.

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What a revolting development. Or to paraphrase an old comedy duo line, “Look at the fine mess I’ve gotten myself into.”

For some reason not too long ago, as I have chronicled here, in the belief that the Mets were a better team than their play and their record indicated, I told their general manager, Omar Minaya, that they needed to win 12 games in a 15-game stretch to demonstrate that they belonged in the National League East race.

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To this day George Brett has no idea what he would have done had he been able to get at Tim McClelland.

“I had no clue,” Brett said of that day 25 years ago Thursday (July 24) when McClelland, the home plate umpire in a Yankee Stadium game between the Yankees and the Kansas City Royals, nullified a stunning ninth-inning Brett home run against Goose Gossage that gave the Royals a 5-4 lead.

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