FUNNY, how stories are presented.

Lastings Milledge, Mets rookie, for example. It seems important that we know that his brief minor league career has included episodes in which he behaved like a rude dude with a bad attitude. And maybe that is important to know.

But we can’t help but wonder: Why wouldn’t he act that way?

Milledge is 21. From the time he first watched a sport on TV consider the number of times that he was confronted by stimuli that stoked antisocial behavior, consider the number of times that he was tacitly encouraged to grow up to be a wise-guy, tough-guy and all-around creep.

Virtually every SportsCenter and Fox Sports Net show, every sneaker and video game ad, every NFL promo and pre-game show Milledge could have watched included at least a little something that was designed to push a young viewer in a low direction.

Heck, by the time Milledge was 10, many-to-most photos he saw of sports stars had them posed as scowling thugs, as if they were going to jump off the cover of the magazine and slit your throat. Think of it: At no time in Milledge’s life have the trash-talkers, chest-pounders and me-firsters not reigned as the commercially approved, TV-delivered kings of our sports.

So why should any sports-minded 21-year-old be free of the cumulative effects?

I don’t know if, in fact, Milledge is a creep. But given the prompts he has been provided, it would be far more remarkable if he weren’t.

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Then there’s the story about how Major League Baseball has downplayed Barry Bonds‘ achievements to the point where there has been no official celebration of his pursuit of the home run record.

But that’s nonsense. National League team owners, including the Mets, have been holding official celebrations of Bonds over the last three seasons, saluting him, over and over, with the highest honor they can bestow: They’ve jacked up the price of tickets when the Giants come to town.

Even if Bonds doesn’t play or isn’t pitched to when he does, MLB’s celebration of Bonds continues. Even after the steroid stories no longer seemed worth ducking or denying, MLB and its teams, 70, 80 times per season, continue to honor Bonds by cashing in on him.

It’s written right there on the ticket, the one that normally costs $45 is pumped up to $60 for the series against the Giants. Even if Bonds is off steroids, team owners still aren’t.

Shoot, sometimes, when the Giants are on the road, teams throw an official Bonds party six days in a row!

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Friday, in announcing that it has dumped “Bonds on Bonds,” an ESPN press release explained: “Bonds’ representatives wanted creative control for the final episode, which [production company] Tollin/Robbins and ESPN have been unwilling to give throughout the project.”

Yeah, right. After jumping into bed with Bonds – and bombing out in the process – ESPN is now representing that it’s getting out for reasons of journalistic integrity, which, ESPN simultaneously now claims, were never compromised when it first jumped into bed with Bonds.

And that reminds us: Imagine the nationwide bashing ESPN would be taking for the Bonds thing and scores of other things if sportswriters from large newspapers all over the country weren’t on ESPN’s payroll.

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Mets TV man Gary Cohen, after an appendicitis attack Saturday, was expected to be released from the hospital, yesterday, following successful “walk-off surgery.” Howie Rose, who moved from the Mets’ radio side, will continue to fill in on the telecasts during Cohen’s recovery, and Ed Coleman will continue filling in for Rose . . . Trivia question/answer on YES’s Yanks-O’s yesterday: Cal Ripken Jr.‘s first big league appearance was Aug. 10, 1981 as a pinch runner for? Ken Singleton.

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While Dom LaVarco, a reader from Caldwell, N.J., understands that every happenstance in a Yankees game is now attached to the read of an in-game commercial, he nonetheless wonders whether it would make more sense for John Sterling or Suzyn Waldman to tell us it’s the “Brand X Triple Play Inning” before there’s one or two out . . . ESPN’s revised regard for sports and sports fans yesterday was on display within ESPN2’s “Bottom Line” during LPGA coverage. Under “Golf,” European results appeared and note was made that ESPN would have coverage of the U.S. Open – in two weeks. But nothing updating the Memorial, the PGA event being played on CBS.