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Wilson Ramos arrived at his stall in the Mets’ clubhouse to a cluster of balloons jokingly commemorating his 50th birthday, an exaggeration of 18 years by whoever pulled the prank on the veteran catcher. Ramos received a far more important designation from manager Mickey Callaway for Saturday’s game against Washington — another chance to catch starting pitcher Noah Syndergaard. The reunited pairing hit it off, with Syndergaard lasting seven innings after allowing a two-run homer to Anthony Rendon in the first. Ramos also belted a game-tying blast in the fourth of the rolling Mets’ eighth straight win, 4-3, over the Nats at Citi Field. “I know how he likes to throw, power pitch and all that, but I know I haven’t been catching him for a couple of starts,” Ramos said after the game. “I always concentrate on my approach behind the plate and what he likes to do … and he threw a pretty good game.” Defensive-minded backup Tomas Nido had started for Syndergaard’s previous seven appearance...

Sunday’s final round of The Northern Trust at Liberty National in Jersey City figures to be a shootout, with nine players within four shots of the lead, a number of big names at or near the top of the leaderboard and some dark-horse candidates lurking as well. Patrick Reed will take a one-shot lead into the final round after shooting a 4-under 67 on Saturday to get to 14-under for the tournament. Reed, the 2018 Masters champion, leads by one shot over Abraham Ancer, who shot a 3-under 68 to get to 13-under. Brandt Snedeker and Jon Rahm are both 12-under after Snedeker posted the low round of the day, an 8-under 63, and Rahm shot 69. Danny Willett, the 2016 Masters champion, pushed himself into contention at 11-under with a 66. He was joined there by Harold Varner III (68) and Justin Rose (69) among those who are three shots out of the lead. Rory McIlroy and Louis Oosthuizen, both of whom shot 70 Saturday, are 10-under and well within contention. “I’m right there,’’ McIlroy said....

TORONTO — There is a chance for a resolution to Luke Voit’s hernia problem this week. Either the Yankees first baseman is going to be able to return to action from the injured list or he will have season-ending surgery. “It is possible, want to see him in person, see how he is doing and hopefully at some point start introducing him to some baseball stuff and have a better feel,’’ Aaron Boone said of Voit before Saturday’s 5-4 loss to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. “I know he is encouraged and we are as well as how he is doing.’’ Voit has been out since July 31. Right-handed reliever Jonathan Holder was placed on the 10-day IL on Saturday morning with an inflamed right shoulder. “It’s bothering me. It wasn’t a one-outing thing,’’ Holder said. “It got to the point we felt like we had to take care of it.’’ Holder went a season-high 2 ²/₃ innings as a starter this past Tuesday and said he didn’t experience any problem during that outing, but later. “Not when I was pitching, but it...

An author who has investigated the mysterious death of newspaper columnist and TV star Dorothy Kilgallen has asked a judge to let him exhume her body for DNA evidence. Mark Shaw, who wrote “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much” and “Denial of Justice,” filed a petition in Westchester Supreme Court last week to disinter Kilgallen’s body from the Gates of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne. Shaw also wants the court to order a DNA sample from retired journalist Ron Pataky, now 84, to “establish his probable complicity in her death.” Pataky has admitted he was the last person to see Kilgallen alive, Shaw writes. A famous forensic expert, Dr. Cyril Wecht, has agreed to oversee the exhumation and DNA collection, Shaw says in his petition. Shaw contends, in court papers and his books, that Pataky was helping Kilgallen’s enemies,  including Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, who wanted the reporter dead to quash her ongoing investigation into the JFK assassination. The DNA tests, he said, may show th...

After the Mets had a seven-game winning streak snapped just over a week ago, Mickey Callaway came up with this sound idea. “Let’s just start another streak,” the manager said. That was last Friday night in Pittsburgh, after Steven Matz had stumbled against the Pirates and, while the premise sounded great, the Mets seemed due for some sort of market correction. Don’t look now, but the Mets have won eight straight games since Callaway proposed another winning streak. Saturday night they beat the Nationals 4-3 before a sellout crowd at Citi Field, much of which was in paradise, clad in orange giveaway Hawaiian shirts. Luis Guillorme was allowed to keep his shirt on after hitting a tying, pinch-hit homer in the eighth, a night after Michael Conforto was stripped to the waist celebrating his game-winning hit. But considering Guillorme had never homered in his major league career, spanning 107 plate appearances, maybe a teammate should have at least fired Guillorme’s cap into the crowd....

New York’s current and most-recent former mayors slammed President Trump at an all-day gun-control forum in Iowa on Saturday — but first, Michael Bloomberg took a dig at one of the Democrats’ top presidential contenders. Multibillionaire ex-Mayor Bloom­berg told the crowd at an Everytown for Gun Safety event in Des Moines about his backstage sassing of Sen. Elizabeth Warren for making the super­rich her political punching bag. “If my company wouldn’t be successful, we wouldn’t be here today,” Bloomberg said he told Warren. “So enough with this stuff.” Bloomberg founded Everytown and largely pays the nonprofit’s bills. He took the stage alongside almost every Democratic presidential hopeful — including his mayoral successor, Bill de Blasio. Bloomberg recalled how Trump expressed support for stronger background checks after the February 2018 Parkland HS massacre in Florida. “And then the NRA told him to drop it, so he did — immediately,” Bloomberg said. “He didn’t have the guts to...

He’s ready to square off. Daniel Rose-Levine, 16, holds the Guinness World Record for solving a Rubik’s cube — with his feet. The upstate Red Hook, NY, teen can do it in 16.9 seconds, or as long as it takes some people to put on shoes and lace them up. This coming Saturday, he welcomes anyone to challenge him at the New York City Math Festival, put on by the National Museum of Mathematics at Liberty Plaza in downtown Manhattan. “I’m not worried about anyone beating me,” he told The Post. “The only way someone can beat me is if I mess up or get extremely unlucky.” Rose-Levine first mastered the cube, using his hands, at age 11. After seeing other kids solve it at math camp, he taught himself by watching YouTube endlessly — much to his parents’ chagrin. “They told me to do other things, but I was obsessed,” he said. His top time got to 5.3 seconds and he has more than 15 cubing-competition wins under his belt. (The current world record for solving by hand is 3.47 seconds, held by Y...

A campaigning Mayor Bill de Blasio called for a boycott of Walmart Saturday in the wake of last week’s mass shooting in El Paso — and also took aim at President Trump and his “tiny little hands.” “I’ve got a little message for President Trump,” he said to polite applause at an Iowa gun-control forum Saturday. “Mr. President, it’s not Hollywood. It’s not video games … It’s the guns that are the problem.” “Take those tiny little hands of yours, pick up the phone, call Mitch McConnell, and say the Senate has to vote for gun safety measures right now,” de Blasio continued. Hizzoner, making his yet another visit to the Hawkeye State since announcing his quixotic White House bid in May, pushed advocates at an Everytown for Gun Safety event in Des Moines to boycott big-box behemoth Walmart to get their message across. “It’s time to boycott Walmart,” he said. “It’s time to stop putting money in the hands of a company that puts out on the streets that kill innocent people.” “Right now the...

TORONTO — Gary Sanchez’s left-groin strain had healed to the point at which the Yankees removed him from the injured list and put the All-Star catcher in the lineup for Saturday’s 5-4 loss to the Blue Jays. Now the Yankees have to hope the slump Sanchez was in before getting injured didn’t follow him from a two-game minor league rehab stint with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. In 22 games (21 starts) before getting injured, Sanchez hit .135 (12-for-89) with two homers and a .442 OPS. In an encouraging sign, Sanchez homered in his second at-bat Saturday, a solo blast in the top of the fourth inning. It was his first homer since July 4 at Tampa Bay. While Sanchez was out, Austin Romine and Kyle Higashioka batted .351 (20-for-57) with seven homers and 19 RBIs to remove the sting of losing Sanchez. Even though Sanchez might get some at-bats as the DH with Edwin Encarnacion and Luke Voit both on the IL, the Yankees sent Higashioka down to Triple-A on Saturday. “I feel good, the swing...

Jeffrey Epstein’s death brought a raft of conspiracy theories to life. A day after 2,000 pages of documents were unsealed in Manhattan federal court — alleging new, repugnant details of sex abuses claims against Epstein and his wealthy and powerful associates — the money manager was suddenly dead of an “apparent suicide,” authorities said. But the official explanation didn’t satisfy many on social media. Suggestions that Epstein’s death had something more nefarious behind it began popping up almost immediately after news of his death was reported, with blame assigned to both current and former officials on the left and the right. Lynne Patton, the New York and New Jersey administrator for Housing and Urban Development, was among many who pointed the finger at the Clintons. Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane multiple times, and Patton picked up on a popular theme that many friends and acquaintances of the former president and his wife have died prematurely. “Hillary’d!!” Patton ...

There is really nothing better than stumbling across a game-changer this late in the fantasy baseball season. The MLB trade deadline didn’t exactly produce the normal frenzy we see in the fantasy world afterwards, but there is definitely one piece most owners are looking to grab to complete their championship puzzle. When the Astros acquired Aaron Sanchez, the young right-hander became that coveted game-changer. If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that Astros pitching coach Brent Strom is the new pitching guru and can turn any hurler into an ace. We saw him resurrect the career of Justin Verlander and enjoyed the veteran’s return to Cy Young form. We watched him turn a really good Gerrit Cole into a dominant strikeout ace whose near-13 K/9 ranks second in the league among pitchers who have thrown over 100 innings this season. We even watched Strom turn a tomato can like Wade Miley into a reliable fourth or fifth starter. If you’ve been tracking the progress of the Astros ...

Jeffrey Epstein’s death of an apparent suicide resolves, however frustratingly, his child sex trafficking case, in which he was named as sole defendant — but the feds have vowed to continue their probe into potential accomplices. The “brave young women” who are Epstein’s victims can still expect justice, Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said Saturday. “To those brave young women who have already come forward and to the many others who have yet to do so, let me reiterate that we remain committed to standing for you,” Berman said in his statement. “And our investigation of the conduct charged in the Indictment — which included a conspiracy count — remains ongoing.” Epstein’s many accusers remained determined to pursue those they say helped him. Among those still on the hook are Epstein’s longtime girlfriend, Ghislanie Maxwell and former employee Nadia Marcinkova, both of whom have been named in civil suits as accomplices. “Epstein is gone, but justice must still be served,...

DES MOINES, IOWA — You can take the mayor out of New York, but you can’t keep New Yorkers from dumping on the mayor. A group of protesters blanketed the Iowa State Fair with thousands of dollar “Bills” — fake currency shaming Hizzoner for blowing taxpayer cash on his presidential run — ahead of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Sunday tour of the iconic farm fest. “In Bill we trusted, in Iowa he fails New Yorkers,” the faux banknotes read. They feature de Blasio’s mug in place of George Washington’s, and scorch him for scoring “0% in the presidential polls.” He’s technically at 0.3 percent, according to Real Clear Politics. “I said to myself this guy’s wasting millions of dollars in taxpayer money to run for president when … nobody supports him, and I’m thinking to myself what a waste,” Mike Fischer, a New Yorker organizing the Iowa State Fair effort, told The Post. “So we may as well print up dollar bills and hand it around and maybe he’ll get it.” Fischer found volunteers to pass the “Bil...

It was after the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black when Patrick Reed decided he was quitting golf. Not for good, but at least for a few days to figure out why Captain America had lost his super powers. Reed, the 2018 Masters champion and Ryder Cup hero, missed the cut at Bethpage after rounds of 74 and 72. It was the low point of a difficult stretch during which he hadn’t come close to sniffing a top-10 finish since tying for 14th at the WGC-Mexico Championship in February. His swing felt fine and his putting was decent, but the results were consistently disappointing. “I love to play,” Reed said Saturday at Liberty National in Jersey City, where he will take the 54-hole lead into the final round of The Northern Trust. “But my team hadn’t seen the type of golf I played at Bethpage where we thought we were doing things well, but the numbers were getting worse and worse. I couldn’t put a finger on it. So my team said, ‘Let’s shut it down and take a break. Hang out with the family, do...

In the third of a six-part fantasy draft preview series leading up the NFL season, Fantasy Insanity discusses the war-room game plan for quarterbacks in the draft. Next week: running backs. Nobody likes to wait. Whether you’re in a doctor’s office, at the DMV, in line at the drive-thru, those precious seconds wasted while the driver in front of you continues to idle at a green light. Waiting is maddening. And the Madman doesn’t like getting mad. Yet, every once in a while, when the winds are just right, and the stars align, and the moon is in Sagittarius — or maybe it’s Taurus, or Libra … I don’t know, I read more astronomy than astrology — but when these events occur, maybe waiting isn’t so bad. You might think such an unlikely sequence of events is rare. But in fact, it happens routinely. For example: every time you have a fantasy draft. Every. Single. Time. Why? Because it is rewarding to wait to draft a quarterback. Note, we are talking about traditional leagues. If you’re in ...

Elected and public officials angrily took to Twitter Saturday demanding answers in the apparent suicide of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. “I’m dumbfounded,” wrote Preet Bharara, former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in a series of tweets. “Public deserves answers.” Epstein was discovered unresponsive Saturday morning, after sources said he appeared to have hanged himself in his unit inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center. He was awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges and was alone in his cell at the time. The US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are probing his death. US Rep. Jerry Nadler, Democratic Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, later reiterated Bharara’s demands, writing: “Deeply disturbed to learn of Jeffrey Epstein’s death while supposedly on watch at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.” “There are many questions that need to be answered in this case,” he added. Monica Lewinsky tweeted ...

Danny Willett called it “a nice day’s work,’’ adding he “wasn’t quite expecting’’ the 5-under 66 he shot in Saturday’s third round of The Northern Trust at Liberty National in Jersey City. “After 12 holes, we were just teetering around and not really doing anything and yeah the last kind of six holes, jumped up on us pretty fast,’’ Willett said. “A good position going into [Sunday] and hopefully we can just enjoy ourselves and end up with one of them top-70 spots.’’ Willett is 11-under and three shots out of the lead held by Patrick Reed. The top 70 players in the FedEx Cup points standings move on to the BMW Championship next week outside of Chicago. The highlight of Willett’s round was an eagle two he took on the short par-4 16th hole. “I pulled my tee shot into the left rough, as I have done every day,’’ he said. “Yeah, a little bump-and-run 8-iron under the tree and up the bank. To be honest, anywhere on and around that green would have been a great shot, and for it to pop in ...