The fuss over the Kansas City Royals’ 18-game losing streak is lost on long, tall Dave Steigerwald.

“Hang their heads?” Steigerwald echoed incredulously. “They’ve got a long way to go before they can do that. They’re not even a 10th of the way to where I once was.”

And where would that be? On the losing end of 220 consecutive basketball games.

In the midst of a stretch of 100 games in 102 nights, Steigerwald, all 6-foot-7 inches of him, was sitting on the edge of his hotel room bed, talking to his Uncle Rex.

“How did your game go tonight?” Uncle Rex asked.

“Ah, we lost,” Steigerwald said in a dejected tone.

Uncle Rex’s deep, throaty laugh roared through the telephone and awakened Steigerwald to his own foolishness.

Of course his team lost on that night seven years ago. They were paid to lose. Steigerwald played for the Washington Generals, nightly foils for the Harlem Globetrotters.

Any hangover from the 220-game losing streak and from not having played in the NCAA Tournament in college vanished one mad March night.

You remember where you were March 18, 2005, of that I’m certain. So does Steigerwald, an energy trader for UBS Investment Bank in New York City.

He was in Whistles Pub in Scranton, Pa., for his annual get-together with buddies on the first night of the NCAA Tourney.

Before going into the bar, he went into the trunk of his car and pulled out a stack of T-shirts from his alma mater, Bucknell, where he played.

He and his girlfriend, Lori Houck, a former Bucknell point guard, passed out the gear to all the patrons.

“The Syracuse-Vermont game was on before ours, and we were all disappointed Vermont won because we figured that was the one big upset game,” Steigerwald said.

Turned out there were two, of course. After Chris McNaughton was done swishing jump hooks and Kevin Bettencourt’s deep and deeper shots fell, and the scoreboard read Bucknell 64, Kansas 63, Steigerwald was the star of the bar.

“They all threw me on their shoulders and carried me around,” Steigerwald said. “I’ve been smiling for six months. I still get a chill now, just talking about it.”

One man’s agony is another man’s ecstasy.

So don’t fret over the once-proud Royals now playing the Washington Generals and making Globetrotters out of the rest of the American League. Focus on how happy they’ve made baseball fans in Tampa Bay and Boston, Oakland and Cleveland, Detroit and Seattle.

And relish the chance to witness history Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium. By then, the streak will be 21 after Oakland’s weekend sweep.

A loss Tuesday to the Red Sox and that Royal pain in the Glass family empire known as Kansas City’s American League ballclub can erase the Orioles from the AL record books. Plenty of tickets available. Bring the family.

In Thursday’s series finale against the defending World Champs, the Royals can set the record with 24, pushing the ’61 Phillies to second.

Gene Mauch managed them. Stung by lung cancer, Mauch moved onto his eternal reward earlier this month. He’s a baseball god now. Think he’s going to let the Royals win?