New York ? The Yankees would witness Tino Martinez marching up and down the bench on this sun-splashed, ball-bashing Wednesday at the Stadium, listening to him telling them, “Look around, there’s no better place to play.”

Whatever Joe Torre has needed him to do, he’s delivered. That’s old school on the Yankees. That’s the expectation of a champion. When something’s asked of you, something’s done. Sometimes, you have to leave to come back again. Martinez can tell Jason Giambi all about that.

Giambi must have been listening in the Yankees’ dugout, but it’s doubtful he heard Martinez. For Giambi, everything is about self-preservation and selfish interest. Strangely, the man that Giambi usurped three years ago is sparing him the greater scorn of the public, because Martinez keeps doing the job that George Steinbrenner paid Giambi to do. Martinez keeps hitting the home runs, keeps getting those curtain calls so often that Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada nicknamed him “C.C.”

In the emptying Yankees clubhouse, where bags were packed for the West Coast trip awaiting the team, it was like the Incredible Shrinking Man, Giambi, has turned into the Invisible Man. No sign in the clubhouse of Giambi, who had been hiding out all Wednesday morning and afternoon. Martinez doesn’t just have his old job back, but also the responsibilities belonging to the $120 million fraud, Giambi.

For as much of a distraction and an albatross as Giambi has made himself for these Yankees, he ought to do something to give them a measure of relief. If that means spending a week at the Holiday Inns of the International League, instead of the Four Seasons of the American League, so be it. Giambi is pretty up on his rights, but never his responsibilities. He’s done nothing but take, take and take. For the first time, the Yankees asked him to give a little. They gave him the contract, the public support, the use of the Stadium for the most humiliating news conference in Stadium history (“I’m sorry, but I won’t tell you why”) and the understanding that keeps coming despite his grand jury testimony confirming his baseball career has been one big, steroid fraud.

Even the height of hubris wouldn’t allow Steinbrenner to spend $80 million to rid himself of his beer-league softball player. Why anyone in baseball would even agree to take on $5 million of that remaining contract is unfathomable. Steroids made him, and now steroids have ruined him. It seems now that Giambi is waiting out the Yankees to trade him, or release him. When he’s willing to lose a little cash on the $80 million still owed him, Steinbrenner will be glad to talk business with his agent.

What Giambi needs is a chance to play every day, and that can’t happen here. If Giambi cared about getting better — cared about winning — he would have accepted the assignment to Columbus.

Tough to swallow his pride? He has no pride, or he wouldn’t have gotten himself into this mess. Torre was saying that it was tough for a “competitor” to go down to the minors. Competitor? When has Giambi ever been that in his whole, phony life? It isn’t a competitor that uses steroids, but someone afraid of competing.

Competitors compete. They don’t cheat.