Here, apparently, is how it works:

The Yankees spend money to improve their team and it’s an affront to humanity, the Evil Empire Redux.

The Red Sox spend money to improve their team and it is righteous, necessary and good business sense.

And I’m thinking this: Just, exactly, when did Sox fans — Boston sports fans in general  — get so whiny and entitled?

It’s been hilarious the past few days listening and reading all the hardball harrumphing from the Hub. It’s like nobody else gets to be smart and creative except the Olde Towne Team. Everyone else either cheats or is subject to various conspiracy theories.

The latest. Derek Jeter is still a Yankee sympathizer, given the way he handed over Giancarlo Stanton. So let’s discuss: If Jeter wants to be an idiot, why should the Yankees care? And how does that construe some Evil Empire thing?

I mean, did the Yankees do something wrong?

Joel Sherman, one of the great baseball writers in the country, wrote this the other day in the New York Post:

“Together,” he wrote, “Stanton and whatever minimum wage-ish second baseman (Gleyber Torres, Tyler Wade, Thairo Estrada or Ronald Torreyes) plays second will cost the Yanks combined in 2018 for luxury-tax purposes about what Matt Holliday and Starlin Castro cost in 2017.”

So the Yankees, essentially, acquired one of the game’s preeminent sluggers and didn’t imperil their luxury tax standing. In fact, it’s likely the Yankees will get under the $197 million threshold for next year.

Sorry, but that’s brilliant.

And there’s the rub.

It’s part of the deal in Boston now where your fan card comes with a caveat: Not only do your teams win, but they do it by being smarter than everyone else.

It begins, of course, with the Patriots. It’s to the point now where The Hoodie could punt on fourth down and 15 from his own 25 and get lauded for heretofore undiscovered creativity. No mention ever that annually, other members of the AFC East couldn’t win the American Athletic Conference. Or that the Pats tend to struggle when the other coach (Coughlin, Tom) doesn’t do anything idiotic in The Big Game, unlike Carroll, Pete and Quinn, Dan.

And this narrative  — God, we’re so smart here, just ask us  — gets perpetuated throughout Boston talk radio blathering as if it’s second nature.

But I digress.

Giancarlo Stanton to the Yankees irritates Red Sox loyalists because their team didn’t think of it first. Or couldn’t pull the trigger. It reminds me of UConn fans accusing BC of being disloyal to the Big East when the Eagles bolted to the ACC.

What, you think UConn wouldn’t have trampled its way to tobacco road if presented the opportunity first?

But I digress again.

You want to be angry, Sox fans? Go after Jeter. I’m not sure how he can look his Marlins people in the face. Trading Stanton’s contract might be good business. But how do you not get one of the Yankees’ elite prospects back?

And just so you know: I’m down on Jeter myself. His media creation, The Players Tribune, does nobody in my business any favors. I’m kind of wondering why Jeter would treat the media as such, given that he was treated like royalty every day as a Yankee. Can you recall him ever getting asked a tough question? What, he was treated unfairly by some wretch with a mustard stain on his tie?

I don’t miss Jeter at all here. I kind of like watching the gregarious (and talented) Didi Gregorius just as much.

Just sayin.’

But I digress for the third time.

Bottom line: Quit your whimpering, all you Boston sympathizers. Other people get to be smart and creative, too. Sure, it helps when you have the Steinbrenner bank account. Last we checked, though, John Henry’s bottom line didn’t need a telethon, either.

And look at it this way: Sox-Yanks just got a whole lot more interesting.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro