I HATE stories like this. They’re hard to write and even harder to read.

But we’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do, so here we go: Be prepared for the entire TV landscape of local team sports to change, and radically. Again.

Get ready to wipe the slate dirty, because another nasty storm front is moving in, one that’s almost guaranteed to shuffle, cut, then deal out a game of 52-card pickup for viewers. Once again, the who, when, where, why and how much of watching a New York-area team play its games on TV is about to do a number on your heads and/or wallets.

Friday, the first legal salvo was fired in what almost assuredly will become an ugly and escalating war between the entrenched forces of Charles Dolan/Cablevision and George Steinbrenner’s newly formed New York Sports Network (Yankees, Nets and Devils).

Friday, Cablevision-owned MSG Network filed suit against the Yankees, claiming, in essence, that the team took MSG’s right of final refusal to renew Yankee rights and made MSG a bad-faith offer, one that was designed for MSG to refuse so that the Yanks can become the crown jewel in a new sports network.

MSG’s 12-year, $486 million deal with the Yankees expires at the end of this season. With its expiration, consumers can reasonably expect a shakeup and shakeout that will change everything, from where local MLB, NBA and NHL teams’ games appear, to how much more it’ll cost to watch, to who calls the games, who produces and directs the games, to even the availability of game telecasts on local cable systems.

Cablevision, history tells us, does not respond kindly to the loss of sports programming to competitors.

In 1988, before it owned The Garden and all its parts, it lost Yankee rights to MSG Network, then prevented MSG Network programming – Yankees, Knicks and Rangers – for many months from appearing on Cablevision’s tri-state area cable systems.

Should Cablevision lose Yankee rights, as well as Nets and Devils rights to Steinbrenner’s upstart New York Sports Network, one can expect that Cablevision will be less than eager to clear the New York Sports Network on Cablevision systems.

Ironically, in 1988, when MSG wrested Yankee rights from Cablevision-owned SportsChannel, Cablevision boss Charles Dolan declared that MSG had so grossly overpaid for rights that a) the cost would have to be passed on to all subscribers if he were to offer MSG on basic, and b) that unless MSG agreed to appear on his systems as a premium service, MSG was off his air.

Today, not only does Dolan/Cablevision own MSG Network, MSG, by Cablevision’s design, appears on a basic tier – just as Dolan/Cablevision insisted that it wouldn’t and couldn’t. Furthermore, Dolan/Cablevision today would pay far more to retain Yankee rights than what MSG paid in the pre-Cablevision days to outbid Cablevision for Yankee rights.

If Cablevision loses the Yankees, Nets and Devils, can we expect to pay less for MSG/Fox Sports New York (or whatever’s left of FSNY)? Heck, no. While the addition of expensive sports programming causes Cablevision to increase rates, the loss of sports programming has never inspired Cablevision to reduce subscription fees.

So, if the New York Sports Network is a go, one can expect to pay roughly twice what he or she is paying now for local sports – that is, if New York Sports Network is cleared on one’s cable system.

So get ready, folks. By next spring you’ll probably need another new scorecard to figure out what you can get, if you can get it, where you can get it and how much you’ll have to give to get it.

And the Dolan Family vs George Steinbrenner doesn’t make for much of a rooting interest, does it?

One more thing. For 12 years, in addition to $486 million, MSG Network gave the Yankees high-quality, round-the-calendar coverage. But these days, quality doesn’t mean anything to anyone. Sustained quality can’t compete with the offer of an extra nickel.

Steinbrenner’s idea of a good broadcaster, after all, is John Sterling.

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IN THE history of the Red Sox, who has hit 20 home runs the fastest in a season? Ted Williams? Carl Yastrzemski? Mo Vaughn?

Nope. The answer is Carl Everett, with his fourth team in six years, who this year hit 20 homers in his first 49 games. And that, folks, is the kind of thing that baseball now regularly does to baseball.

With that, and other latter-day absurdities in mind, HBO/Black Canyon Production’s “When It Was A Game III” debuts tonight on HBO at 10 p.m..

In a way, a third installment of “When It Was A Game” seems unnecessary, too much of a good thing providing diminished results.

The first two editions (1991 and ’92) mesmerized viewers through rare footage from the ’30s, ’40s and into the ’50s. Up close and personal color video from a pre-TV era made for riveting viewing, over and over. They were time-capsules, unearthed, opened and presented for your inspection.

“WIWAG III” focuses on more familiar moving images, baseball in the 1960s, when TV began to do baseball show and tell, every day. There are fewer surprises in WIWAG III. After all, closeup color moving images of a Carl Hubbell seem far more fascinating than those of a Harmon Killebrew.

Yet, tonight’s WIWAG has its compelling side because it shows that the baseball played just 30-40 years ago – and so much of it played in daylight – carries a far greater resemblance to baseball played 60 years ago than to the current version.

Virtually every star and near-star featured tonight was synonymous with one, perhaps two teams, as opposed to four or five. Players are seen reflexively running toward first base instead of reflexively basking in self-glory near the batter’s box. Today’s players are more inclined to depart the batter’s box between pitches than when after they hit fly balls.

What began as a stand-alone show is now a trilogy. And, true to their titles, all three depict baseball when it was a game.

By the 1970s, when baseball began to supplant doubleheaders and day games for marketing consultants, the game began to trend selfish, transient and sideshow gimmicky. Thus, tonight’s When It Was A Game III provides closure on the kind of game played before anyone began to use the word closure.

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ELIAN Gonzalez, back in Cuba, met Friday with Fidel Castro. But his American kin should take heart. If Elian works hard, develops a 96 mph fastball, perhaps a splitter, too, and works on his pickoff move, he’ll be a lock for U.S. citizenship.

America, after all, has a critical shortage of pitching.