Little-known fact: I’m something of an expert in Table Tennis.

I don’t mean in terms of actually playing the game. I’m just OK at that. What I mean is that I’m probably one of the very few people to have ever been paid to write articles about table tennis, thanks to my old job editing the now-defunct WCSN.com.

And though that website’s new home at Universal Sports has archived such hilarious masterpieces as “Wathelet shocks show jumping world” (read it, it’s pretty amazing), for whatever reason my numerous articles on the techniques and history of table tennis are now somehow no longer available on the Internet.

Anyway, I think table tennis is fun as hell, because it is. And when I read an item in the Daily News’ Gatecrasher section today that the cast of Gossip Girl was seen at Susan Sarandon’s new table-tennis club, I was intrigued.

Now I recognize that I’m not exactly running in the same social circles as the cast of Gossip Girl and any club they’re hanging out at is probably not my speed, but I figured maybe that would be a cool trend to trickle downhill to schlubs like me: a bar filled with Ping-Pong tables.

Why not? All my favorite bars are the ones with something to entertain me in them (besides, you know, booze), like a pool table or skee-ball machine or even, in times of desperation, Trivia Whiz or Photo Hunt.

And Ping-Pong is more fun than all of those things, with the possible exception of skee-ball, so having a bar where I could play it would be sweet. Plus it’d become a pretty obvious place to host beer-pong tournaments, which I never participate in but frequently bet on at parties.

But it turns out, Susan Sarandon’s new table-tennis club is not a “club” in the bar sense of the term “club,” but a “club” like a golf club or a polo club. Check it out: It costs $1000 to join.

Look, Susan Sarandon: Table tennis is awesome. We all agree on that. But part of what makes it awesome is that it’s kind of silly. Yes, it’s really fun to posture after Ping-Pong matches and act like you’ve won something actually important. But it’s not something actually important. It’s Ping-Pong. And you’ve taken that posturing way too far, Susan Sarandon.

And yeah, I recognize that it’s played on the Olympic level and it’s taken really seriously in places that are not the U.S. or Canada. I get that. But people take show jumping and curling and the two-man luge seriously, and those are all really silly too.

Oh, and apropos of nothing other than the interplay between Ping-Pong and sillyness: One of China’s top table-tennis players is named Wang Liqin. No disrespect, but how unfortunate.

If you missed it earlier this week, I added my five most-trafficked SNY.tv columns to the right column of this page, mostly just so I could have something there. But I promised to add my five favorite SNY.tv columns, and so here’s that.

Most of them are from this year, which I suppose makes sense if I’m theoretically improving with practice.

One alarming trend I noticed was that most of my favorite columns came within a month-long period from April 21 to May 21 of this season, so maybe I’ve already peaked.

Anyway, in no particular order:

Other things Steve Phillips said, May 21, 2009.
The less-read companion piece to “Things Steve Phillips said.” Way too long, but it summed up a lot of how I feel about baseball in general. It narrowly beat out a similar article from the previous May.

Moving out, moving on, Feb. 2, 2009.
This is my recap of the fan-organized funeral for Shea Stadium over the winter. It was sad, and I was sad, and I had to spend a ton of time de-wimpifying the column. Still turned out quite wimpy, though.

Mind games, April 30, 2009.
A call to stop speculating on players’ mental states based on what we see of them on the field and through the media. Basically a rehashing of what I always write, which is basically that I know nothing and probably neither do you.

Gone to market, Jan. 15, 2009.
I was trashed for this one in message boards by people asking how I expected Omar Minaya to tell the future, but it’s a solid summary of what have been my main criticisms of Minaya.

Abraham Nunez?, June 6, 2008.
Honestly, I have no idea how I didn’t win a Pulitzer for this epic. This one cracks me up, because it’s a clear case of what happens when I remove my mask of sanity. Chris Carlin bashed it on Loud Mouths, and maybe rightfully so, because it’s about Abraham Nunez. But the Mets’ bench really did suck that year.

Those have been added to the sidebar. I have also added, as per Anit’s suggestion, a link to the embarrassing photos of Cole Hamels post for anytime anyone needs a pick-me-up. Being a Mets fan is tough, and New York City can be a cold place, but neither is anything that a picture of Cole Hamels with his dog in a backpack can’t cure.

Lastly, I’ve added two videos to the “About Ted” page. One of them got me in trouble for drinking on camera, and then got me an Emmy nomination (!?). The other one allowed me to just go mess with people in Shea Stadium.

One of the unique charms of working in Rockefeller Center is that, thanks to the Today Show, you’re often exposed to pop sensations you might have otherwise entirely avoided.

Sometimes, this works out. This is how I found out what Katy Perry looked like, and I’m very happy that I did.

Other times, not so much. On Monday, I trudged to work through a howling crowd of 9-year-old girls (and a few of the 45-year-old mustachioed men who somehow always make it out to the same events), holding signs saying things like, “Marry Me, Justin Bieber!”

The thing is, until that moment, I had no idea who Justin Bieber was. Not even a little. I had never heard the name so much as uttered. This was my introduction to Justin Bieber.

Fascinated as I frequently am by silly matters of pop culture, I turned on NBC when I got into the office.

Turns out Justin Bieber is a 15-year-old boy who looks like an 11-year-old girl and carries on like Usher while singing like, well, just any average 11-year-old girl, I guess. It’s not that he’s a bad singer. He wasn’t terrible. He just wasn’t particularly good.

I’m not a reliable judge of 15-year-old boys, but based on the anticipation of all those little girls, I’d guess that Justin Bieber is quite hot. It appeared that, though those girls might not have known exactly what they wanted, they knew they wanted to have it with Justin Bieber.

Poor kid. He’s got about a 1 in 500,000 chance to maintain any sort of relevance past puberty, and even if he does, it’s a pretty safe bet he’ll be psychologically scarred in some irreparable way.

But what’s really mind-boggling about Justin Bieber is that apparently he got his start as a YouTube sensation. So maybe I had it wrong all the time I used to spend blaming record companies back when I was sure they were shoving Britney and ‘N SYNC down our throats because they were just easily marketable, pretty crap.

Maybe people just like pretty crap, and they’ll find it their damn selves if the record companies can’t do it at a rapid enough rate. Or maybe the whole “YouTube sensation” label is itself some marketing trick from the record company to make Justin Bieber seem in some way more legit than all the doe-eyed pop stars before him. Maybe they just cherry-picked a marketable YouTube sensation.

All I know is the dude’s been a trending topic on Twitter basically since the moment I heard of him. I guess he’s blowing up big time. Here’s hoping he enjoys it while it lasts.

A couple of readers in the Voice of the People section in today’s Daily News, apparently responding to some earlier discussion that I missed, suggested that Johnny Vander Meer’s record of two no-hitters in a row is the baseball record least likely to be broken.

That could be true, but — and not to diminish the accomplishment, because it’s amazing — it sort of feels like a bit of a novelty record, no? I mean, Vander Meer’s dominance over those two starts is crazy, but it also feels like a crazy run of luck. It’s a pretty safe bet that no one’s ever going to break Fernando Tatis’ record for grand slams in an inning, either.

I feel like the record least likely to be broken that is often overlooked — and this is a pretty record-ish record — is Cy Young’s ridiculous 511 wins. The game has changed drastically since Young played, and so we almost look at that like a footnote more than anything — a novelty itself — but it’s no less amazing. Walter Johnson is the only other pitcher to break 400.

Basically, for anyone to even come close to Young’s record at this point, teams will have to radically change the way they use pitching staffs in some unforeseen way. I strongly doubt anyone is ever again given the opportunity to throw 400 innings in a season — and rightfully so, since so many of the circumstances have changed.

But that dude must have had some kind of arm.

Back when I supported myself by tutoring for the verbal SATs, I spent a lot of time explaining to high schoolers the difference between indifference and ambivalence.

Indifference means you’re impartial or you don’t care. Ambivalence means you have mixed or contradictory feelings, hence the prefix ambi-, meaning both.

I can’t think of anything in New York sports in recent years that I’ve been more thoroughly ambivalent about than the Atlantic Yards landgrab that would move the Nets to Brooklyn, which is hotly contested and going to state supreme court tomorrow.

I lived about five blocks from the proposed site from 2005 until August, first in Prospect Heights, just south, then in Fort Greene, just north. I loved living in Brooklyn, in both spots. It fit me in some way that I can’t say anyplace else I’ve ever lived has.

On one hand, I feel like there are a ton of people there who would absolutely embrace a professional team and create one of the most diverse and energetic fanbases in the league. On the other, I certainly recognize that eminent domain seems unfair, and I find it difficult to argue in favor of kicking people out of their homes against their will.

But progress is progress, and a lot of times unfortunate people have to be displaced for decisions a community — since the city’s and borough’s elected officials are in favor of the development — deems necessary for continued growth. On the other hand, the traffic at Flatbush and Atlantic already sucks, and I could only imagine what it would be like the night of a Nets game, even if the spot is a huge subway and LIRR hub.

I love contemporary architecture, and I hate when people make new buildings that are supposed to look old, so I think it’s cool that Brooklyn would theoretically have a huge 21st century skyline. On the other hand, I’m not at all fond of Frank Gehry’s work and many of the proposed skyscrapers looked completely ridiculous. Then again, I hear Gehry’s off the project, but that in turn makes me worry about whatever they’ll settle on eventually.

I guess my issue is that there’s so much information out there about the project, but it’s very difficult to find any from anyone without some sort of agenda. It seems likely to happen, but not nearly to the scale initially planned.

So that’s cool, I guess. I still don’t know.

Marty Noble, in a mailbag for Mets.com, says the Mets are “boxed in” with Carlos Beltran and probably could not trade him even if they wanted to because of the money he’s owed.

That’s probably true. As great as Beltran is, it’s tough to imagine a team wanting to give up much of value for a guy coming off an injury-plagued season with two years remaining on a huge contract.

Beyond that, trading Beltran, one of the very best players in the game from 2006-2008, would likely amount to selling low for the Mets.

I don’t think it’s even really worth discussing, and, since Beltran is my favorite Met to watch, I would never advocate trading the guy. But there are couple of red flags on Beltran that make me a little nervous about his next two years.

According to Bill James’ Plus/Minus, Beltran went from being one of the top center fielders in baseball in 2007 and 2008 to just slightly above average in 2009. Obviously he was injured, plus defensive stats tend to fluctuate pretty wildly anyway, but that big a dropoff can’t be a good sign.

More alarmingly, and sticking with the BillJamesOnline theme, Beltran went from being consistently one of the best baserunners in baseball (averaging a net gain of about 42 bases a year from 2002-2008) to being a -3 in 2009. That’s a pretty tremendous downfall, and not something that can be explained by a couple of failures to slide.

Naturally, both of these are speed-related problems and so, if Beltran is healthy, we should expect the numbers to head back toward his mean. But his injury was a vague one and I’m a paranoid Mets fan. I can imagine nothing worse than seeing Beltran become an injury-plagued or ineffective albatross in his last couple of seasons with the team, somehow empowering all the misguided fans who have forever felt he was overpaid and apathetic.

Of course, all that said, he did hit .325/.415/.500 in 2009. So, you know, even if he’s not quite Carlos Beltran in 2010 and 2011, smart money says he’ll still be really awesome.

Mets’ top pitching prospect Jenrry Mejia will make his AFL debut today. Ike Davis had a pretty decent day there yesterday.

The Jets’ defense is appropriately chagrined.

Jay-Z is unwilling to perform “Yankees Rule This Town”, a parody of his “Rule This Town.” Really? Shocker. Joan Jett covered “I love Rocky Road” like a billion times.

(FWIW, I once pool-hopped at a house that supposedly belonged to Joan Jett. Also, there’s probably a special ring of hell for wacky morning DJs on Top 40 stations.)

In advance of the big fella’s start on Friday, Steve Lombardi at WasWatching.com breaks down CC Sabathia’s starts with between 7 and 10 days of rest. There’s no real identifiable pattern, it appears.