Football and baseball have such a grip on some men that even when they’re having a medical emergency they wait until a game is over before heading to the hospital.

The number of men in the emergency room of the University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore rose 50 percent after a professional football game, according to a new study released on Monday at the annual meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians in New Orleans. Thirty to 40 percent more men sought care after a baseball game.

The study was conducted by Dr. David Jerrard, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the hospital. He looked at 796 televised sporting events over three years: professional and college football games, professional baseball games and college basketball games. And if you thought only playoff games would spur such foolhardy behavior, you’re wrong. Jerrard deliberately included regular season games.

The study did not address the problems that brought the men to the emergency room, and more research is needed to explain the reasons for the delay. But Jerrard speculates they simply didn’t want to miss the end of the game.

Attention anyone considering such a rash choice. Some emergency waiting rooms have televisions.

On Sunday, I wrote about a coalition of mayors working to keep illegal guns out of their communities. It’s called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and Yonkers’ Philip Amicone is a member. So is Mount Vernon’s Ernest Davis. If you want to keep up on the group’s work, here’s its website: www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org.

Despite the Sept. 11 attacks, only about a quarter of New Yorkers say they have a family emergency plan that all family members know about. That’s less than the national figure, 31 percent, and less that what was reported in Louisiana and Mississippi, 41 percent.

Those findings come from a survey done by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

The director of the school’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Dr. Irwin Redlener, has written a book about why we remain unprepared for large disasters and what we can do about it.

I interviewed Redlener today about his book, “Americans at Risk,� and I’ll write about his comments for an upcoming column.

In the meantime, here’s another finding from that survey: Thirty-four percent of New Yorkers felt prepared for a terrorist attack in their community. Forty-five percent described themselves as prepared for a natural disaster compared to 57 percent nationally and 68 percent in Louisiana and Mississippi.

In the fall-out from Rep. Mark Foley’s resignation over sexual IM’s and inappropriate emails, politicians keep turning to the same defense:

Republican Rep. Sue Kelly of Katonah: “I am a mother, a former teacher, and a grandmother. I have a strong record of protecting children. If anything had been brought to my attention, I would have acted very forcefully and immediately.�

President George W. Bush on Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert: “I know Denny Hastert, I meet with him a lot. He’s a father, teacher, coach who cares about the children of this country.�

Embattled Republican Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds of Buffalo: “It’s astounding to me as a parent or a grandparent that anyone would insinuate that I would seek to cover up inappropriate conduct between an adult and a child.�

Why is this proof of good behavior? Parents have been known to neglect their children, teachers and coaches to abuse them.

And what about the people who don’t have children? Are they automatically suspect. How about a different defense?

In honor of the season, here are a few “did-you-knows” about mums — or chrysanthemums (courtesy of the National Chrysanthemum Society):

That mums were first cultivated in China and showed up in writings as early as the 15th century B.C.

That they were grown as herbs and were thought to have the power of life.

That the Japanese later adopted a single-flowered chrysanthemum for the emperor’s seal. The chrysanthemum throne is the world’s oldest monarchy.

That they were brought to the United States in Colonial times.

That though we plant them everywhere in the fall, some Europeans use them exclusively on graves.

Their name by the way comes from the Greek — gold flower.

Why does Jeanine Pirro keep going after Assistant U.S. Attorney Elliot Jacobson by name?

It’s an odd strategy.

It would be to her advantage to denigrate the U.S. Attorney’s Office. If she can make the investigation into whether she tried to tape her husband, Al, look like a partisan witch hunt, all the better for her.

Jacobson is a Democrat and he is the man who led the prosecution of Al Pirro for tax evasion seven years ago.

And that’s just it. A jury convicted Pirro. He went to prison. It wasn’t an unwarranted intrusion into the private lives of Al and Jeanine Pirro. It was investigation into the finances of a man who was cheating on his taxes. Tax forms that she signed.

Now why does Jeanine Pirro keep reminding us of that?