World Series performance key for these two free agents-to-be

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — James Shields is an exceptional regular-season pitcher who has struggled in the postseason.

Pablo Sandoval is a good regular-season player who has some Reggie about him.

The biggest free agents-to-be in this World Series offer a contrast that promises to make their coming negotiations fascinating: How much is October worth — or not worth?

The Red Sox have been associated with interest in both players. So Boston, among others, will have to come to peace with how much to factor in October performance.

To some degree, this can be viewed like the NCAA Tournament, where positive or negative Madness provides more information on when to draft a player. The Yankees, for example, considered Carlos Beltran's postseason excellence in their decision to sign him, whereas poor playoff dossiers have not hurt, for example, Nick Swisher or C.J. Wilson from landing big free-agent contracts.

But even within this, Shields creates a bit of a Catch-22: For the very item that makes him attractive — workhorse excellence — could act against him in free agency. Does his poor showing in postseasons, in general, but this one, in particular, scare off clubs afraid he has hit a scary level on his arm odometer? In other words, is he failing now not because of lack of fortitude, but presence of too many innings — and with his 33rd birthday coming in December is that a stay-away alert?

His 1,910 ¹/₃ innings since his 2006 promotion is third most in the majors and one of the pitchers in front of him, Justin Verlander, offers a cautionary tale of giving a huge contract to a pitcher who already has been heavily taxed. Think also, of recent vintage, Roy Halladay, Johan Santana, Matt Cain, CC Sabathia and — even to some degree — Masahiro Tanaka, who threw a ton of innings in Japan.

The three starters in line to be paid in huge in the coming free-agent market are Shields, Jon Lester and Max Scherzer and that trio hardly offered positive calling cards this postseason combining for six starts and a 6.95 ERA. Most of that (four starts) are by Shields and — unlike Scherzer and, particularly, Lester — Shields does not have an accumulation of postseason excellence to counteract this current impression.

Shields comes with the nickname "Big Game James." And while that works for the rhyme, it does not for the results. The righty has delivered a quality start (at least six innings, fewer than three earned runs) in 64.2 percent of his 285 career starts. It is 71.6 percent over his last four years when he had 96 in total. Only Clayton Kershaw (101) and Cole Hamels (97) have more.

Pablo SandovalPhoto: Getty Images

But in seven of 10 postseason starts, Shields has not hit the parameters for a quality start, including three of four this year. In World Series Game 1, he didn't record an out in the fourth inning and was leveled for five runs. The absence again of fastball command — his signature to best facilitate his terrific changeup — must be worrisome for the Royals to use him in Game 5 and any interested team.

The expectation was that Shields could land in the five-year, $90 million to $100 million range going into these playoffs, and that would be too rich for Kansas City to retain him. But will his price drop now?

And will Sandoval's rise? He rejected an overture believed to be in the three-year, $40 million range in the spring. It would be no surprise if he got about $80 million for five years on the opening market. Yes, his waistline is a constant worry, so is that his regular-season production never quite matches his skill. But he does have skill on both sides of the ball, is a switch-hitter and — at this point — his postseason success is no fluke.

In 33 playoff games, Sandoval had a .328 average and .923 OPS. High-level third baseman are hard to find and you can dream that Sandoval, still just 28, has his best years ahead of him — in the regular season.

"Do we want to keep him? Yes," said Giants president Larry Baer said. "We have a good track record of signing back our own."

Davis a pricey setup piece

When the Rays signed Wade Davis long-term before the 2011 season, he was a starting pitcher and they structured the contract in that fashion.

The guaranteed part of his contract was for four years at $12.6 million. But his three option years — which covered his final season of arbitration and what would be his first two free-agent seasons — are for $7 million, $8 million and $10 million.

That is money more in line for a starter than a setup man.

Nevertheless, Davis is no ordinary setup man. He had a 1.00 ERA this year and was as huge a relief force as anyone. So it would seem fine to pick up that $7 million for next year. It is just that Greg Holland will be in his second year of arbitraton, he made $4.675 million this season and as arguably the best closer in the AL could see that grow to the $7 million-$8 million range.

Can the Royals afford to pay $15 million-ish for roughly 130 innings late in games?

"Yes, in the immediate it works," Royals general manager Dayton Moore said. "We can make that fit. But we do have to analyze our roster from an economic standpoint every year."

Translation: Kansas City might have to listen to offers for either Holland or Davis this offseason and — if not then — probably the following offseason when both of their salaries together might equal $20 million.

Eiland: Nothing but 'respect' for ex-mate Righetti

In Dave Eiland's major league debut, Aug. 3, 1988, he worked seven innings of one-run ball. He was the winning pitcher of record when he left, the Yankees leading 5-1 heading to the bottom of the eighth at old County Stadium. But the reliever he came in gave up five runs and got just one out.

The pitcher was Dave Righetti.

But when I asked the Royals pitching coach about the Giants pitching coach, Eiland did not offer that as his memory of Righetti. Instead, he said: "I was a rookie and that was a time when they treated rookies badly. [Righetti] went out of his way to make me comfortable. Really, I have a ton of respect for him as a baseball guy, but more importantly as a person."

For the record, Righetti did get a save in one of Eiland's six career victories as a Yankee — on June 17, 1989 versus Texas. The identity of the two center fielders that day may also be of interest. For the Yankees, hitting ninth, was Roberto Kelly, who is now the Giants' first-base coach. The Rangers had a skinny center fielder leading off for them that day. His name was Sammy Sosa.

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How Rob Astorino could win

Is it possible that Rob Astorino could deliver a historic upset in the gubernatorial race? That will be the question in the final two weeks between last night's debate and the election Nov. 4.

To judge by the polls, Gov. Cuomo's re-election is a lead pipe cinch. I could find only one political sage who thinks Astorino has a chance. The others think the question is how close he'll get.

Neither side landed anything like a knockout blow in last night's debate.

The latest Siena poll has Cuomo ahead of Astorino 54 percent to 33 percent. That's a lot softer than the 63 percent that Cuomo was running at this point against Carl Paladino. It is whereCuomo wound up with two weeks later.

At this stage of the race four years ago, Paladino, a political amateur, was floundering. Astorino, by contrast, is a veteran of political office, a Republican executive who was re-elected to lead, in West­chester, a Democratic county.

The governor's lowest blows against Astorino in the debate were to suggest he's running a racist county because he's defending the county, as have Democrats before him, against lawsuits over housing.

Astorino's reply is that he's won handsomely in Democratic West­chester, proof of his ability to win with diverse voters in a county that is supposedly "where Republicans generally go to die."

The Republican also also insists that he can shellac the governor upstate. Siena's poll shows Cuomo ahead of Astorino upstate, 47 percent to 38 percent. But Astorino reckons upstate voters resent the extremism of Cuomo's opposition to gun rights and support for late-term abortion.

He reckons that the key number to look at is not the one in the polls. It's 0.7 percent.

That's the economic growth in New York last year, emblematic of the fact that the state in the Cuomo years has been falling behind the national average. New York is now 46th in the nation.

Since Cuomo became governor, New York has added a paltry 502,000 private-sector jobs. Texas added 252,000 jobs last year alone. Astorino says that upstate New Yorkers are "dumbfounded" by these comparisons.

Particularly in view of the fact that Cuomo has blocked fracking, which could easily produce a boom and jobs upstate. That New York is the only state that has natural gas and doesn't permit fracking is, says Astorino, "ludicrous."

What about the award to Cuomo the other day from the Tax Foundation? It was for lowering the corporate tax rate. Cuomo touted it in the debate.
Astorino isn't impressed, noting that New York is still at or near the bottom in the rankings of states' business climate.

He calls that "ridiculous," and asserts that New York still has the highest overall tax burden in the country.

"Eight different [income-tax] brackets!" he exclaims. He wants what he calls "flatter, fairer" taxes, with two brackets. He would set the bar at $300,000 in income for married persons filing jointly, $200,000 for individuals. Below those incomes, it would be 4 percent; above, 6 percent.

Astorino insists he'd take the tax rate for New York City residents to below 10 percent for the first time since 1960 (when Dwight Eisenhower was president, Nelson Rockefeller governor and Robert Wagner mayor).

On the sunset written into Cuomo's cap on property taxes, Astorino is withering. Cuomo's cap would end in 2017; it leaves New Yorkers unprotected from the Assembly, which need only refuse to act in order to kill the cap. Astorino would make the cap permanent.

Then there's the corruption question. The debate last night sizzled with the question, though without casting much light.

Astorino at one point suggested that Cuomo could even get indicted by a federal prosecutor, Preet Bharara, who's picking up the pieces from the governor's disbandment of his own Moreland Act Commission.

Cuomo called Astorino's sally outrageous. The Green Party socialist candidate, Howie Hawkins, put in a plug for complete public financing of campaigns.

No wonder Astorino has come out for the radical anti-corruption strategy of term limits — on which Cuomo is waffling — and penalizing felonious public employees by taking away their pensions.

So could Astorino win? The cognoscenti say "no," but I'm not convinced. There is a governor who's brought out an autobiography titled "All Things Possible": great highs, and deep lows, and even bitter humiliations. The author is Andrew Cuomo himself.

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Census workers manipulated economic data: new whistleblower

The city known as America's story factory is making up Census data.

In the latest allegation of The Post's exclusive probe into fishy goings-on at the Census Bureau, a new whistleblower says workers in the Los Angeles region have been manipulating economic data.

Contact information for the veteran Census worker — who reached out to me by e-mail recently and whom I interviewed by phone — has been turned over to congressional investigators who are looking into data falsification in other parts of the country.

"Everybody knows falsification is going on," the whistleblower told me, adding the malfeasance in the LA region is so obvious that it's hard to miss.

She said she's coming forward now because she "applauds" the others who have spoken up already.

Census employees have blown the whistle on the Denver and Philadelphia regions. A Denver whistleblower recently turned over information to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

A whistleblower in the Philadelphia region told me a year ago about the case of Julius Buckmon, a field rep who was accused of falsifying more than a hundred surveys each month. He was eventually caught and allowed to leave the bureau. But there was no public investigation until The Post broke Buckmon's story last year.

Since then, the Inspector General of the Commerce Department, which oversees Census, and the House Oversight Committee, along with the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, have conducted probes.

Commerce Inspector General Todd Zinser found wrongdoing on the part of Buckmon — but exonerated the supervisors that Buckmon alleged ordered him to falsify data. Zinser also said he found no proof that the falsification was widespread.

The LA whistleblower means that 1 Census workers in four of the six regions (Chicago, LA, Denver and Philadelphia) have alleged data falsification. So far, I haven't heard from anyone in the New York or Atlanta regions.

In what shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, it appears that since The Post investigation, all of the regions are reporting more trouble getting people to respond to their surveys. That could be because Americans have suddenly gotten more shy about personal details. Or it could reflect less cheating because of heightened scrutiny.

Zinser said in his report there was no truth to allegations — made by a source to The Post last year — that the Census office in Philadelphia manipulated the national unemployment rate in the months before the last presidential election. In fact, Zinser said it was impossible to do.

But he either ignored or didn't know that 120 computers — 11 of which belonged to supervisors — went missing from the Philadelphia Census office in September 2012, two months before the election. That information was disclosed only after The Post obtained the e-mails of Philly supervisors under a Freedom of Information Act request. Meanwhile, Commerce is fighting the release of many other e-mails.

The Oversight Committee also found wrongdoing with respect to Buckmon. It concluded that the Census' data-gathering process had "vulnerabilities" that needed addressing.

But the committee also said it couldn't measure the scope of the falsification problem because Commerce had "obstructed" its investigation.

The LA whistleblower says no one in official Washington has yet to reach out to her. But the allegation she is making can be easily checked by investigators without her help.

"There are some FSAs [field service areas] that month after month had a 100 percent response rate" to their surveys," she said. "That alone should raise flags!"

"I can understand an occasional 100 percent response rate but you have to raise an eyebrow when some FSAs have 100 percent every month," she said.

Although the numbers vary according to area and which survey is being conducted, each FSA consists of 10 to 15 field reps reporting to one supervisor. The reps scour the area doing interviews and report back to the supervisor.

If what the LA whistleblower says is true, either a bunch of field reps are awfully persuasive in completing interviews or they are filling in the survey answers themselves.

The other possibility: Supervisors are fudging the results on the reps' computers to indicate interviews were successfully completed.

The stakes are high, of course. The Bureau of Labor Statistics requires a 90 percent success rate for interviews that go into the Current Population Survey, which Census conducts on BLS' behalf. It's those results that are used to calculate the nation's monthly unemployment rate.

"To be perfectly honest, the BLS should be questioning the data, not just you alone," the LA whistleblower said.

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Programmers in Comcast-TWC battle air concern over viewership data

Programmers battling Comcast's mega-merger with Time Warner Cable are voicing concern over what company owns viewership data collected by the cable giant's set-top-boxes.

The media companies are asking the Federal Communications Commission to decide the data issue along with the larger proposed merger.

Comcast also collects information from broadband households that it could use to improve its ad- targeting.

A combined Comcast/Time Warner Cable would control roughly 40 percent of all US broadband homes, giving it a significant leg-up in the realm of ad targeting.

It's common practice for ad companies to track what customers are looking at online, but knowing whether a particular TV commercial sent a customer to Amazon.com in search of that product is advertising's holy grail.

"There's a battle over data — it's our data," one programming source told The Post. "[Comcast] knows when you fast forward, what channels you move to and what your location is."

Programmers argue viewership information belongs to them.

The FCC is also examining how and when Comcast authenticates programers on its Xfinity app, a service that gives viewers access to TV programming online.

"They can be a big gate-keeper," one programming source said. For instance, Comcast set-top boxes might carry the entire bundle of channels from a company, but be more selective about the choice on Xfinity.

Programmers don't want their channels blocked from Comcast's app, especially if viewership shifts rapidly to online, said a source.

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The man who rescued the Giants should be in Hall of Fame

The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced its nominees Wednesday, and among the spate of quarterbacks and cornerbacks and coaches was a new category for "contributors." Bill Polian — who built the Bills, Panthers and Colts out of ash, was one of those nominees. Ron Wolf, who brought the Packers back to dominance after decades of dormancy, was the other.

All due respect to Polian and Wolf, who certainly had worthy careers, if the first name produced for this category wasn't George Bernard Young, then they shouldn't have even bothered. Because all Young did in his career was turn the New York Football Giants from a dysfunctional mess to a perennial model. The fact that he isn't already a decade into his stay in Canton is ridiculous enough.

The idea that the Hall custom-fit a voting category for these men apart from players and coaches because, too often, executives through the years (including Young, a three-time nominee) almost always get lost in the blur of the voting process — and let's be brutally honest: the new category could be NAMED for him — tells you only one thing:

George Young did his job TOO well.

Because when we think of the Giants now, we think of consistency and we think of professionalism, we think of regular excellence on the field and clockwork precision off. And it has been that way for decades. The Giants have won four Super Bowls but it's the way they've won them that stands apart. And if you don't happen to have a memory that extends beyond the Reagan Administration, it's easy to believe it's always been that way.

But it wasn't always that way. In the '60s and '70s, the Giants became a vast wasteland of underachievement and cheap drama. There was the family feud between Wellington Mara and his nephew, Tim, that nearly destroyed the franchise's foundation, and the fact the Giants bailed on New York City for a sweetheart deal in the New Jersey Meadowlands, at exactly the moment the city was going broke and could least afford that defection.

There were years of wasted drafts and lost seasons, entire generations of fans lost to the Cowboys and the Dolphins and the Raiders. And, of course, there was The Fumble, which led to the airplane flying overhead and a message — "15 YEARS OF LOUSY FOOTBALL — WE'VE HAD ENOUGH!"

Those Giants marinated in the kind of turmoil to which we've grown accustomed with the modern-day Mets and Jets and Knicks and Islanders. And they may have stayed that way but for Pete Rozelle's gentle (or not-so-gentle) insistence the Maras agree on the obvious: they needed a fixer.

George Young was The Fixer.

Young was the one who somehow managed to juggle the warring Mara factions for 10 years. Young was the one who, on the day Ray Perkins bolted for Alabama in 1982, informed Tim Mara: "I'm going to announce Bill Parcells right now so there won't be weeks of speculation. And because the head coach of the Giants should be a job people want to run to, not walk away from."

And, yes: there were the two Super Bowls on his watch, XXI and XXV, and the five Executive of the Year awards, all of it done in New York City, and if you don't think that counts for extra credit you're kidding yourself.

"George's legacy is greater than two Super Bowls," Wellington Mara said upon Young's death in December 2001. Said Parcells, with whom Young often sparred and quarreled: "Without his support and help, it would have been impossible for anyone to succeed there."

What Young started in 1979 — with the Giants' playoff drought already at an extraordinary 16 years — lasts still, 35 years later, was handed down to Ernie Accorsi and then to Jerry Reese, an organizational belief that there's a right way to play football games and a right way to conduct football business. That was always Wellington Mara's credo, even in bad times. It took Young to make it real.

And he did that job well. Too well, apparently. Because the only reasonable explanation why George Young wasn't nominated for the Hall of Fame on Wednesday can only be this: everyone assumed he was already in.

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Oscar de la Renta remembered by the fashion community

Fashion insiders around town are mourning the loss of legendary designer Oscar de la Renta, who passed away at age 82 Monday night at his Kent, Conn., home after a long battle with cancer.

"Oscar deserves an Oscar for the Lifetime Achievement of living well," Bergdorf Goodman's Linda Fargo told us Tuesday."He was to fashion what Cary Grant was to Hollywood — elegant, talented and possessing a great sense of comedic timing and humor. Any moment in his orbit was time very well-spent. We are all the better for having been in it."

Alina Cho, a longtime de la Renta client and a Random House editor-at-large, said, "What I remember most about Mr. de la Renta is his smile. He smiled with his eyes."

All 12 of his worldwide stores were closed Tuesday out of respect, while Saks Fifth Avenue took the rare step of blacking out six of its windows and placing a quote from de la Renta in each, with one reading, "There is always an emotional element to anything that you make."

The designer told his closest friends he had little time left last week, giving him, and them, enough time to say farewell.

Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour wrote a tribute on Vogue.com to her longtime friend de la Renta, who among other things designed the wedding dress for Elizabeth Cordry for her marriage this summer to Wintour's son, Charlie Shaffer.

Wintour and her daughter, Bee Shaffer, visited de la Renta at his Connecticut home just last weekend. The editor recalled: "His last words to me were I love you, and I said I love you back."

Modal Trigger

Exterior of closed Oscar de la Renta store, located on Madison Ave and E 66st.

Robert Miller

Fans left flowers for the fashion designer at the entrance to his store.

Robert Miller

A memorial of memorable quotes from the fashion icon.

Robert Miller

A fan in front of the closed store.

Robert Miller

Oscar de la Renta's Madison Avenue store location.

Robert Miller

A sign telling fans why the stores were closed for the day.

Robert Miller

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NYT staffers clamor to exit amid buyout offer

It looks as though there may be a veritable stampede for the exits prompted by the New York Times buyout offer.

Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. was hoping to entice 100 newsroom staffers to accept buyouts — or face the prospect of involuntary layoffs.

So far, more than three times that target number have put in a request to review their potential severance packages. Workers had to submit the request for review by Oct. 17.

"There were over 300 requests," said Grant Glickson, the unit representative of the Newspaper Guild. The Guild members now have until Dec. 1 to make a final decision.

"A lot of people were just securing their rights and checking it out," said Glickson, who does not expect all 300-plus to opt to leave.

Still, he said the numbers this time far exceed the requests submitted in the last round of voluntary buyouts offered in 2012. That buyout fell short of the 100-person target and resulted in about 15 layoffs.

The buyout offer this time is heavily weighted toward enticing longtime employees to leave. All Guild-covered employees are potentially eligible for three weeks pay for each year worked.

Guild-covered employees with 20 or more years will get an added sweetener in the form of a one-time bonus of 35 percent of their annual pay added to the package.

Sulzberger has said it is "painful" that the Times has to make the newsroom cuts.

The problem is that print ad revenue continues to fall and has not been offset by a rise in digital revenue. "He's trying to be as generous as he can be," Glickson said about Sulzberger.

If Sulzberger still has to resort to layoffs, the downsizing would take place at an inopportune time — the week before Christmas. And if it comes to that, those employees won't be eligible for the 35 percent bonus.

A Times spokeswoman declined to comment as the process unfolds.

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Simon & Schuster e-book deal with Amazon closes a chapter

The Simon & Schuster agreement with Amazon brought a sigh of relief to some authors, who will not have to worry about it deteriorating into an ugly, protracted battle such as the one that still pits Amazon against Hachette on e-book pricing.

"I love both Simon & Schuster and Amazon, so I'm thrilled that war has been averted," said Walter Isaacson, the best-selling Steve Jobs biographer, who just released his latest S&S book, "The Innovators."

"I think [S&S CEO] Carolyn Reidy and [Amazon CEO] Jeff Bezos should now be made peace envoys to the Middle East so they can save not just publishing but the world," Isaacson said.

Under terms of the S&S-Amazon deal, the publisher gets back the right to set the prices on its e-books — a privilege that it has not had since 2010, when the Justice Department claimed that the big US publishers were guilty of collusion in setting e-book prices.

Five big consumer publishers paid multimillion-dollar sums to settle the claims.

Now the new deal restores S&S's right to set its own e-book prices.

The formula for selling ink-on-paper books that Amazon carries for S&S will not change appreciably.

That is still handled in a more traditional "wholesale model," whereby Amazon buys books from Simon & Schuster and Amazon is then free to set its own prices for consumers.

While consumers are not likely to see rock-bottom prices on e-books, there do appear to be some incentives for the publishers to make some price concessions.

"Importantly, the agreement specifically creates a financial incentive for Simon & Schuster to deliver lower prices for readers," Amazon said in a statement.

A lot still remains to be seen, including whether the Simon & Schuster deal can spur an end to the now six-month-old feud between Amazon and Hachette Book Group over e-book pricing.

One informal authors group known as Authors United is reportedly pressing the US to open up an anti-trust investigation against Amazon.

Amazon, at the start of the feud, stopped taking pre-orders on books by Hachette authors and stopped discounting prices, which hurt sales. The standoff is becoming a bigger problem for authors as Christmas book-buying season approaches.

There are still precious few details of the S&S-Amazon agreement in circulation. The old agreement was not set to expire for two months. The new agreement is said to be a "multiyear deal."

Reidy broke the news in an e-mail she sent to her authors on Monday,

"It addresses our mutual concerns about preserving the value of our intellectual property in the marketplace, as it is a return to a version of agency pricing that — with some limited exceptions — gives control of e-book pricing to Simon & Schuster, while providing us the flexibility to deliver great prices for readers," she wrote.

Hachette and Amazon, meanwhile, were not commenting on their battle. The three remaining publishers in the so-called big five — Penguin Random House, HarperCollins (owned by News Corp., which also owns The Post) and Macmillan — are all believed to be facing negotiations with Amazon on new deals in the months ahead.

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Daily Blotter

Manhattan

A Midtown bank-robbery suspect seen on surveillance video at the main branch of the New York Public Library in May was arrested after returning to the branch this week, police said Tuesday.

On May 22, Jason Bird, 33, allegedly entered the Chase branch on Second Avenue near East 43rd Street at about 2:10 p.m., passed a note to a teller and fled with $660, cops said.

About two hours later, he walked into the Chase branch on Madison Avenue near East 38th Street and tried to score again, but fled when the teller stalled, authorities said.

He quickly entered the nearby main library branch at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, where his image was recorded on surveillance video, cops said.

Officers armed with a description of the robber spotted the suspect on the video and distributed pictures to NYPL staffers.

On Monday, the suspect returned to the library and the staffers called cops, sources said.

Bird was charged with two counts of robbery.

***

A visitor from Florida reported being ripped off by a livery-cab driver who drove off with $3,500 of the victim's valuables on the West Side, sources said.

The 26-year-old passenger hailed the car at Amsterdam Avenue and West 156th Street and was taken to West 39th Street and 10th Avenue, where he forked over $50 and asked the hack to wait while he ran into a pharmacy.

When the victim returned, the livery cab was gone, he said.

The victim told police the driver made off with about $3,500 in property as well a Social Security card and a debit card.

***

A Chelsea woman seeking her Prince Charming online was hounded by a creepy guy asking her about her finances, sources said.

The 63-year-old single professional victim joined Match.com and began an online chat with a man, who got her number and began phoning her on Oct. 9, sources said.

He called repeatedly and in broken English asked probing questions about her bank and credit accounts, sources said.

The alarmed victim contacted authorities.

The suspect's online dating profile claims that he is 59 years old, 180 pounds with brown eyes and brown hair.

***

A Comic Con thief grabbed more than $500 worth of art and books at the Javits Center on the Far West Side from an exhibitor, sources said.

The 46-year-old victim left two paintings, each worth $250, and 45 comic books in the convention center, which reportedly has 24-hour security, on the evening of Oct. 12 and returned at 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 14 when he discovered the theft.

The same day, Sprint telecommunications reported that a $1,000 tent bearing the company's logo had been stolen, sources said.

Brooklyn

A man who allegedly stabbed his mother to death at their Flatlands home over the weekend was charged with murder, cops said Tuesday.

Christian Holloman, 20, killed Iman Thomas, 42, in the midst of an argument at about 6 p.m. Sunday, police said.

The victim was found mortally wounded in the back yard of the home on East 43rd Street, cop said.

She was taken to Kings County Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Holloman was charged with murder and weapon possession.

Neighbors and law-enforcement sources reported that Holloman has a history of family trouble and run-ins with police.

His rap sheet includes prior arrests for robbery, assault and criminal contempt, cops said.

***

A 21-year-old man was killed in a stabbing at the Linden Houses in East New York early Tuesday, authorities said.

Soon after neighbors heard screams in a 10th-floor hallway at about 1:10 a.m., Jason Phillips was found with two stab wounds to the chest in the public housing project on Wortman Avenue, cops said.

The victim was rushed to Brookdale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police are looking for a man with braided hair who was spotted near the scene around the time of the murder, law-enforcement sources said.

Staten Island

An Eltingville man was caught taking a work van full of tools to his parents' driveway and unloading the ill-gotten goods into the garage, law-enforcement authorities said.

Joseph Cammarano, 25, hopped into the vehicle owned by Bella Home Improvement and drove it to the home on Whitman ­Avenue near Hylan Boulevard at about 6:10 p.m. Friday, a Criminal Court complaint states.

The truck owner tailed the thief and watched in astonishment as Cammarano unloaded the victim's pricey tools in the driveway, sources said.

Cammarano was charged with seven criminal counts, including grand larceny of property worth more than $3,000, possession of stolen property and unauthorized use of a vehicle, court records state.

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Giants, Bumgarner stop Royals in World Series opener

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — They took second on a fly ball to deep left-center, advanced a runner with a bunt and hit in the clutch. In other words the Giants introduced themselves to the World Series with their business model.

All that crispness was backed by Madison Bumgarner's sensational outing in a 7-1 victory over the Royals in Game 1 Tuesday night in front of 40,459 at Kauffman Stadium who hoped Kansas City's first Series appearance since 1985 would be better than it was.

Game 2 of the best-of-seven Series is Wednesday night when Jake Peavy starts for the Giants, who have an early lead in their quest to win a third World Series in five years. Yordano Ventura goes for the Royals, who had their record-breaking streak of eight victories to start a postseason fractured.

Hunter Pence's two-run homer highlighted a three-run Giants first inning against the struggling James Shields, who passed a painful kidney stone last week, a situation he said Monday wouldn't affect him.

Shields was charged with two more runs in the fourth when he departed without getting an out. In three-plus innings Shields allowed five runs and seven hits.

Shields admitted Monday he wasn't pleased with his postseason performance.

"I haven't pitched the way I wanted to. There is no doubt about it, I feel I definitely could pitch better,'' said Shields, who has gone from "Big Game'' to "Big Lame." In four postseason games he has a 7.11 ERA. He has given up 28 hits in 19 innings.

Gregor Blanco, a .159 (7-for-44) postseason hitter, opened the game with a soft single in front of center fielder Lorenzo Cain. After St. John's product Joe Panik's fly to left-center was deep enough to advance Blanco to second, Buster Posey stroked a single to left that put runners at the corners for Pablo Sandoval, who entered the tilt batting .326 (14-for-43) in the postseason.

He crushed a double that hit the right-field wall on a bounce.

Blanco jogged home but third-base coach Tim Flannery tried to score Posey from first and he was out by a step thanks to a fine throw from right fielder Nori Aoki to second baseman Omar Infante. His relay toss to the plate was perfect for the out.

Pence followed by sending a 93 mph, 3-2 fastball just to the right of straight-away center field and the visitors led 3-0.

Bumgarner, the best starter in the World Series whose 18 wins were three less than major league leader Clayton Kershaw's 21, cruised to his third October win in five starts.

In seven innings the lefty allowed three hits and a run. Bumgarner is 3-1 with a 1.40 postseason ERA.

Counting getting Eric Hosmer to ground to the right side to leave the bases loaded in the third, Bumgarner retired 12 straight until Salvador Perez homered with two outs in the seventh. That
halted Bumgarner's postseason record of 32 ²/₃ scoreless innings on the road. It also snapped his scoring World Series innings streak at 21 ²/₃.

The Giants added two runs in the seventh with the help of Royals right fielder Aoki turning a Panik single to right-center into an RBI triple. Sandoval added his second RBI with a single.

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