That night when the 1986 Mets won the World Series as Giants fans watched on mini TVs at Giants Stadium

Brad Benson had just been flagged for jumping offside and then chewed out by Bill Parcells for it. The Giants offensive lineman, sitting on the sideline while the defense was on the field, still didn’t quite understand why he had been unable to hear the Phil Simms’ snap count, which led to the penalty and those ensuing punishments.

Joe Morris filled him in.

“I said to him, ‘The Mets have a chance to win the World Series, that’s why all those people are cheering,’ ” Morris told Newsday. “And he said, 'OK, but I wish they would have stayed home and watched on TV and not come to our game.’ ”

Forty years ago tonight, one of the most memorable events in New York sports took place at Shea Stadium. The Mets beat the Red Sox in Game 7 to win the World Series on Oct. 27, 1986. But two rivers away at Giants Stadium in New Jersey a football game also was being played, and it took place amid some of the strangest vibes anyone could imagine.

As Frank Gifford said on the ABC broadcast of that Giants game against Washington: “This is wild. Bizarre.”

Scheduling quirks and technology

Thanks to the confluence of several events — the Mets’ epic comeback to win Game 6 of the Series two nights earlier and force a deciding Game 7; a rainout the following day which pushed that contest from a Sunday to a Monday; and the availability of a portable television known as a Sony Watchman that had debuted in the U.S. just two years earlier — fans, to the annoyance of Benson and a few others, were able to attend the NFL game while keeping tabs on the baseball in real time.

We take such convenience for granted these days. Fans anywhere can simply pull out their smartphone and watch whatever they want from their seats, from a baseball game to the RedZone Channel to a movie if they get bored enough. In 1986, though, the technology was so new and the experience was so riveting. All throughout Giants Stadium people gathered around small two-inch screens that glowed out fuzzy low-def black-and-white images received on long antennas, allowing them to follow two live events at one time. It was the birth of second-screening.

So when Ray Knight hit a home run in the seventh inning that gave the Mets a 4-3 lead in the game, the 75,923 at Giants Stadium saw it and cheered … and helped draw Washington offensive tackle Joe Jacoby offside. At least that time it was the opposing team that suffered as opposed to Benson and the Giants.

When the Mets had two outs in the top of the ninth with Jesse Orosco on the mound, Simms, the Giants’ quarterback, was flapping his arms trying to get the home crowd to quiet down so the football players could hear his signals.

“Good luck, Phil,” quipped Al Michaels on the broadcast.

And when Orosco struck out Marty Barrett to clinch the title, flung his glove into the air, and performed his iconic mound pirouette, the reaction in New Jersey was so loud that officials had to momentarily pause the football game late in the third quarter to allow for the celebration to simmer down.

 About the only people in the building who weren’t following the baseball game closely were the football players.

“We were aware that the Mets were playing but the stadium erupted a few times and we didn’t really know what was going on,” Carl Banks, a linebacker on that Giants team, told Newsday. “It was so loud and at that time everybody had Watchmans in the stands so they knew what was going on. And then it lights up on the jumbotron — ‘Mets Win!’ — and the place was electric.”

One person who seemed particularly immune to the hubbub was Parcells. Giants players said he never even mentioned the phenomenon to them and certainly wasn’t going to allow them to use it as an excuse.

“It was a little unusual because you were getting some unexpected cheering, and it was from the baseball,” Parcells told Newsday last week. “But you don’t pay much attention it. They were our fierce rival at that time, so you don’t need to talk too much because they know what they’re in for. There wasn’t much psychology needed for that.”

Two teams on title runs

Even without the odd circumstances of that night, the Giants game would have stood on its own as a memorable one. They came into it off a loss to the Seahawks in Seattle the previous week and trailed Washington by a game in the NFC East standings.

They emerged from it with a 27-20 victory thanks to Morris’ go-ahead touchdown run with 1:38 left in the game.

“I felt like I took the weight off us from the mistakes we made earlier in the game, and Parcells would stop yelling at [the offensive linemen],” Morris recalled of that touchdown. “I wanted to make sure nobody would get yelled at.”

Morris finished with 181 rushing yards and two touchdowns plus 59 receiving and Lawrence Taylor sacked Jay Schroeder three times. Simms threw for 219 yards, including a touchdown to Bobby Johnson.

“We were ready to go,” Banks said. “We kind of felt it was about time to turn the corner and if we could beat Washington we would be OK. That’s where our momentum really started.”

The result put the Giants in a tie with Washington atop the division with 6-2 records. They would not lose again that season, winning 12 straight in a streak that culminated in Super Bowl XXI.

Yes, the 1986 Giants’ championship run began the night the 1986 Mets won the World Series.

Banks said there were a lot of similarities between the Mets and Giants of that era. Both were in title droughts that went back to the 1960s, both began their pushes back toward relevance in the early 1980s. And both were contenders in the years immediately before their concurrent championship seasons, suffering losses in baseball division races or football playoff games that wound up steeling them for their coming accomplishments.

“We were both making runs,” Banks said. “In 1986 we were pretty much connected, our two teams, the Mets and the Giants, that whole year.”

A connection that was never more obvious than it was on the night of Oct. 27.