It goes way back to kindergarten when my incredulous mother asked the teacher: "How could Sammy possibly have flunked finger-painting?"

Baseball, on the other hand, is a far different story.

I’m the guy you tap on the shoulder when you’re not quite certain about the intricacies of the Infield Fly Rule.

So it was bound to be interesting a few weeks back when my wife and I decided to make a day of it in New York City by first visiting the Museum of Modern Art, then going uptown to catch a night game at Yankee Stadium.

One of us was pumped about seeing a major exhibition presenting the works of Paul Cezanne and Camille Pissarro "in the context of their artistic relationship."

The other Pollak was just as intrigued about viewing a major exhibition of the work of Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez in the context of their artistic execution of the hit-and-run play.

AT MoMA (as we aficionados refer to the Museum of Modern Art): One of the first things to catch my eye is an oil painting by one Kazimir Malevich called "Boy with Knapsack."

It is a black square with a smaller red square under it tilted a little bit to the left.

That’s it.

Your 6-year-old child could do it in 10 minutes.

I had this vision of the "artist" licking his fingers and counting a roll of bills while chortling over how he put one over on some wealthy patron of the arts.

I had a good mind to write old Kazimir and tell him what I thought of his two lousy squares. But he cleverly avoided my reproach by dying in 1935.

Kaz (as his pals surely must have called him) probably didn’t think much of "Boy with Knapsack," either. He left it in Germany when he went back to Leningrad in 1927 and never went back for it.

AT YANKEE STADIUM (as we aficionados refer to "The House That Ruth Built"): It is ridiculously hot, probably the hottest, most humid night of the year.

I’m bummed, mostly at Osama bin Laden.

Before the stadium security folks would let me in, I had to deposit a small pocket knife that had been attached to my keys into a garbage can. I dunno, maybe they thought I would somehow break into the public address announcer’s booth and take over the stadium.

I’d been carrying that little pocket knife around with my keys for about 10 years, and I liked it a lot. If it weren’t for bin Laden making everybody crazy over security, I’d still have it.

AT MoMA: We come upon the work of Marcel Duchamp. It’s called "Bicycle Wheel." That’s probably because that’s what it is. It’s just an actual metal bicycle wheel mounted upside-down on a wooden stool.

Wonder how much the museum paid for this little beauty.

I say to my wife: "Look, it’s a bicycle wheel. This is art? I mean, it’s a bicycle wheel. That’s all it is. Somebody paid for this?"

My wife pretends she has never seen me before in her whole life.

AT YANKEE STADIUM: It is stultifyingly hot, with nary a breeze where we’re sitting along with about 53,000 of our closest friends.

Yankees pitcher Al Leiter just absolutely refuses to throw a strike to any of the Minnesota Twins batters, this despite my persistent exhortations for him to do so.

Because of Mr. Leiter, the game is two hours old by the time he has thrown 115 pitches and leaves in the fifth inning. I do not want Yankees Manager Joe Torre to take Leiter out of the game. I want Torre to beat Leiter up.

In retrospect, it is probably a good thing the security people made me throw out my pocket knife.

AT MoMA: Even a lout such as I has to admit there are many objects of great beauty in the museum, including Andrew Wyeth’s "Christina’s World," Vincent van Gogh’s "The Starry Night" and the voluminous works of Messrs. Cezanne and Pissarro.

But it has been nearly seven hours. My legs are tired. I wanna go to the ball game.

AT YANKEE STADIUM: The Yanks are losing, but I chose a real winner 27 years ago. My wife hasn’t complained even once despite the Calcutta-like heat and the fact that her interest in baseball roughly mirrors my knowledge of art.

From about the seventh inning on, two young women in the row right behind us carry on a loud, nonstop conversation about anything other than baseball. When their subject turns to whether gay guys are the best kissers, my wife starts to giggle.

I just have to turn around.

"Excuse me," I say, "but the ball game isn’t bothering you two, is it?"

The Yanks lose.

The game?

It is anything but a work of art.

Funny, that was the same thing I was saying all day at the museum.

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Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.