What kind of **** is this?

So.

Joe Girardi, on his way home after guiding the Yankees to their 27th World Series win, stops and aids an accident victim who lost control of her car and crashed into a wall at 2:25 a.m.

Good for him. Really — good for him.

But can we stop the canonization process?

"The guy wins the World Series, what does he do? He stops to help," gushed Westchester County police officer Kathleen Cristiano, who was among the first to arrive at the accident scene. "It was totally surreal."

Cristiano was at a nearby DWI checkpoint when she got the accident call.

"He was jumping up and down, trying to flag me down," she said. "You don't expect him standing by a car accident trying to help."

Ummm … why not?

"The driver didn't know it was him until after I told her," Cristiano said.

Wow.

Stand-up shortstop

But while we’re on the good-guy theme, kudos also to the Phillies’ Jimmy Rollins. He didn’t do anything as heroic as helping an accident victim, but he did do something more surprising — try to take the heat off a teammate for a bonehead play.

That teammate was Brad Lidge, who failed to cover third base in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the World Series, enabling the Yankees’ Johnny Damon to take third without a play. The gaffe seemed to rattle Lidge, who quickly gave up three runs and let New York take control of the series.

It was an unusual play.

With Damon on first and two out, the Phillies put on a radical shift for pull hitter Mark Teixeira, so radical that when Damon took off on a steal attempt, third baseman Pedro Feliz covered second. When the catcher’s throw took Feliz to the first-base side of the bag, Damon alertly bounced up and raced to third.

Where Lidge should have been.

Enter Rollins.

“I take responsibility for it,” the premier shortstop said after the game. “I make sure that the pitcher knows that with Teixeira, we play the shift over, that he knows that on the steal he has to cover third.

“That time, I didn’t really mention anything to Brad, so when you make the pitch, in his mind it was a regular steal. But with the way the defense was set up, that’s my job to make sure that he knows to go to third. I’m the captain of the infield. It’s my job.”

Perhaps Rollins really felt that way. Or perhaps he was just trying to provide Lidge with some cover. Either way, Jimmy Rollins is a class act.

Sterling behavior

Clippers owner Donald T. Sterling must be envious that the “other” Los Angeles NBA team — let’s see, they’re the … ummm … Lakers, right? — are always winning championships and setting records.

Well, now Sterling has a record of his own.

He’s agreed to pay a record $2.725 million to settle a housing discrimination lawsuit that claimed “he discriminated against African Americans, Hispanics and families with children at scores of apartment buildings he owns in and around Los Angeles."

This according to an L.A. Times story.

It continued, “The settlement, which must be approved by U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer, is the largest ever obtained by the Justice Department in a housing discrimination case involving apartment rentals, officials said.”

The largest EVER. Way to go, Donald T., you’re a champion at … ah … something — at last.

Friday column: Honest doesn’t always mean right

There’s a Buddhist teaching on “right speech” that asks three questions of a statement before it is made:

Is it true?

Is it kind?

Is it necessary?

The questions came to mind as I mulled Andre Agassi’s admissions — admissions used to promote his upcoming book — that he used crystal meth in 1997, lied about it, and got away with it.

The revelations from Open, expected to be released Tuesday, have roiled the usually placid tennis world.

Martina Navratilova compared Agassi to suspected baseball drug cheat Roger Clemens. Roger Federer hammered him, as did Boris Becker.

On the other side, former players including Justin Gimelstob, Jim Courier and Mary Carillo stood by Agassi, with Gimelstob saying, “This will not diminish the way I regard Andre, which is as a person with the highest possible character.”

Which seems to be the rub. Who doesn’t like Agassi, and who doesn’t appreciate his character? His rise-fall-rise story, his sense of vulnerability, the work he’s done with disadvantaged kids through his Las Vegas, Nev., academy all incline me to want to give him a break.

And yet.

As I consider the revelations, I keep wondering, what’s the point? And I’m not alone.

“Why is he saying this now that he has retired?,” asked Rafael Nadal. “It’s a way of damaging the sport that makes no sense.”

It must make sense to Agassi; here are two possibilities:

1) To be crass, it gets attention and sells books.

2) Public confession might be important for Agassi’s psyche. If so, he’s getting a lot of bang for his buck, unloading also about his relationship with his father and the fact that, prematurely bald, we wore hairpieces on the court.

But the key admissions remain the drug use and the lying. The first he describes in somewhat glamorous terms — in spite of the fact that crystal meth is a scourge, a highly addictive drug that causes severe physical and psychological damage. As for the second admission, I can’t see it helping his academy students. What’s the lesson here? Lie well enough and you can beat the rap?

Still, there are those who do not care.

“Andre is and always will be my idol,” Andy Roddick wrote. “I will judge him on how he has treated me and how he has changed the world for (the) better.”

But how do these admissions change the world for the better, Andy?

Let’s go back to the three questions:

Is it true? Apparently.

Is it kind? Not to the game that made him rich. Not, I think, to the kids who look up to him.

Is it necessary? Only if a desire to sell books, a desire for attention, or a compulsion for public confession qualify. In other words, no.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

When Are They Going to Learn Dept.

Two more examples this week of TUI — tweeting under the influence. How else to explain:

1) UCLA freshman receiver Randall Carroll not only complaining about Bruins offensive coordinator Norm Chow but referring to him with a racial slur?

2) Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson not only belittling head coach Todd Haley but using a gay slur?

It’s unclear whether Carroll will be disciplined, though he already has been suspended once this year for a violation of team rules. But Johnson has been suspended for his tweet, and the suspension will cost him about $600,000.

Yes — $600,000.

In the past few months, TUI or TWT — tweeting without thinking — has gotten a number of athletes in trouble. Perhaps Johnson and Carroll just weren’t paying attention.

Johnson, who followed his ill-advised tweet by using the slur again while talking to reporters, has a history of doing dumb things. Carroll has a way to go to match him, but he’s off to a promising start.

Mother of the Year candidate

A cheerleader in Columbus, Ohio, got into a disagreement at school, went home and complained to Mom. So, Mom did what any red-blooded, female progenitor would do — grab a baseball bat and go looking for the coach.

When she found the coach, she began yelling at her and swinging the bat near her. Other parents at the practice broke up things up before she could connect, and the mom, the disgruntled cheerleader and the bat all went home.

Oh, I don’t know if we mentioned it, but this was an elementary school.

Coach of the Year candidate

In Lakeland, Fla., Christopher Michael Campbell, a volunteer assistant football coach at Kathleen High School, didn’t like the way the guys were playing.

So he decided to do something about it. What? You mean bring a bat to practice? No, no, my friend, not a lousy bat — a knife. And he not only brought the knife, he allegedly brandished it several times, while cursing for extra emphasis. He reportedly poked one player, tapping him on his chest while verbally threatening him.

Somehow, this didn’t go over well, and now Mr. Campbell finds himself in a certain amount of legal jeopardy as — oddly enough — having a weapon on campus is not only a violation of school board policy but a felony.

Mr. Campbell might have heard about a certain incident a few years back — ah … Columbine, I think it was called. Or he might recall any number of other incidents the past few years, which have led schools — and cops — to frown on bringing weapons to show-and-tell.

A school administrator said that Mr. Campbell was very well-liked.

Not anymore, I’m guessing …