IF IT seems like an especially dry, arid time around here, well, that’s because it is. If you’re wondering if it’s all in your imagination that we’ve seemed to hit some kind of lull in New York City sports, it isn’t. It’s real. It’s something that only happens about every century or so. But it happens. And is happening.

While we watch our neighbors in New England merrily basking in an embarrassment of riches – reigning World Series champs, Super Bowl champions-in-waiting, with an NBA team that sure seems primed to make its own extended run – we’re thirsty here in New York. In a few weeks, 2007 will be over, and with it will come a historic milestone.

Seven consecutive calendar years will have passed without one championship resting beside the name of a team that calls New York its official home. All due respect to the Devils, they are the New Jersey Devils, and as such they don’t belong in this conversation and so their 2003 Stanley Cup doesn’t count. Location, location, location.

Excluding the Devils, excluding the Nets, we have seven pro teams in the four professional sports doing their business every day under the flag of New York City. And since the Yankees carried Joe Torre triumphantly off the Shea Stadium field in October of 2000, we are 0-for-7. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Bubkes.

Now, nobody is going to throw us any sporting telethons, certainly not the fair citizens of Cleveland (who haven’t enjoyed a victory parade of any sort since 1964) or Buffalo (empty in its history unless you count a couple of titles in the early days of the AFL). But, really, when was the last time we cared about what any other city thought about us? We are as parochial a town as there is, so let’s call it as we see it:

This has felt like a historic struggle for us the past seven years.

And as it turns out, it has been.

As it turns out, you need to flip your calendar back to this time last century to find another seven-year stretch as barren as this one. The New York Giants won the World Series in 1905. They won it next in 1921. So from 1906 through 1920, that was 15 title-free years in the city that even then considered itself the central nervous system of professional sports. And even then, it must not have felt quite as bad. The Giants played and lost four Series from 1911 through 1917. The Dodgers (then called, officially, the Robins) played and lost the 1916 Series to the Red Sox and the 1920 World Series to the Indians.

But, still: a drought’s a drought, and that was a doozy, 15 straight years without a banner flying high over the city. Now, it was far less of a crowded scene back then: there was no NBA in that time. The NFL didn’t come along until 1919. The Rangers and defunct Americans wouldn’t be born and join the NHL until 1925. And those who would argue that college football was a major sport in that era will point out that in 1914 and 1916, Army won shares of the national title. Your choice.

In any event, it’s been that long since we’ve had to wait.

(Listen for it: that sound you just heard? It’s the rest of the country screaming out as one: “It’s about time.”)

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But as that wise philosopher Bill Belichick has been known to say: it is what it is. And what it is is a long, long time between sips of water for our sporting town, and a realization of just how spoiled we can get.

Look, we’re lucky: for a lot of those decades, it was the Yankees alone who helped salvage what would otherwise have been a barren landscape. We once went 39 seasons, 1941-79, without one hockey championship. The Knicks have been in business since 1946, and for all the self-styled talk about what a “storied” franchise they are, they have won exactly two championships. Two!

No matter. For the last hundred years or so, someone has always stepped forward to carry the flag of New York. The last time we came this close to such a vast stretch of desert was almost 40 years ago, the 1968 Jets breaking what had been an empty bridge between them and the ’62 Yankees.

Now we’ve detailed in this space just how gruesome and grisly those years were in New York. From 1963 to 1968, the Mets enjoyed seasons where they lost 112, 111, 109 and 101 games. The Yankees finished 10th, ninth, seventh and fifth. The Giants had seasons of 2-10-2 and 1-12-1, the Jets three straight seasons of matching 5-8-1s. The Knicks had a four-year stretch in there of 59-, 58-, 49- and 50-loss seasons. The Rangers played a total of four playoff games from 1963-67, lost every one.

So this era may not be as brutal as that era.

But it’s getting there.

Mike Vaccaro’s e-mail address is michael.vaccaro@nypost.com. His book, “1941: The Greatest Year in Sports” is available in bookstores.

VAC’S WHACKS

I’ll have to be honest, I really believed the Yankees might be out of Santana-rama right up until, you know, Baby Boss said they were.

*

If you read this space enough, you know I quote as liberally from “A Bronx Tale” as some prophets did from the Old Testament back in the day. And even I wasn’t prepared for just how magnificent Chazz Palminteri’s one-man performance of it at the Walter Kerr Theater really is.

*

In keeping with the season, we have this observation from Guest Whacker Guy Breen of College Point: “When Nick Mangold briefly left the game on Sunday vs. the Fish, the Jets had: Anthony Clement, Adrien Clarke and Brandon Moore all playing on the offensive line at the same time. This is apropos for this time of year as Clement Clarke Moore wrote what is commonly known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” And you thought there was no reason to keep watching the games anymore.

*

For the record: unless it is proven that the baseball amnesia he suffered last September is permanent, anyone who thinks the Mets should trade Jose Reyes for a starting pitcher – any starting pitcher, even one as great as Santana – has lost their minds.