BALTIMORE — New York Yankees reliever Kyle Farnsworth was suspended for three games and fined Saturday for throwing a fastball behind the neck of Boston slugger Manny Ramirez earlier in the week.

Yankee fans rejoiced at the news, buoyed by the idea that Farnsworth, who tends to suck, wouldn’t be on hand to hurt the team for three games. Their joy, however, was short-lived, because Farnsworth appealed the penalty, which was to start Saturday night against Baltimore. He will be eligible to pitch until a hearing is held.

Paranoid that a wily Red Sox fan had managed to curse his team, New York Yankees’ owner Hank Steinbrenner paid construction workers to unearth a surreptitiously buried Red Sox T-shirt from beneath the visitors’ dugout at the new Yankee Stadium and had it replaced with the body of Yankee reliever Kyle Farnsworth, who’s been dead to Yankee fans for several years.

The New York Post reported Sunday that two workers approached a construction manager with what they thought was the location of the jersey. After digging a two-foot by three-foot hole, the jersey was found.

“They absolutely pinpointed that if it was in the ground, that’s where it was,” Yankees spokeswoman Alice McGillion told the newspaper.

Initially the Yankees denied the jersey was ever buried in the footings of the new stadium. But clearly the Yankees brass is happier now with the shirt removed and Farnsworth entombed.

In four games this year, Farnsworth was 0-1 with a 5.06 ERA in 9 innings.

Sox fans undoubtedly remember Eric Gagne, the erstwhile National League Cy Young winner who spent last fall trying to kill us all. Gagne, who seemed to implode during every big moment in his brief stint in a Red Sox uniform, is now plying his trade in Milwaukee, where he’s already listed as the third-leading cause of heart attacks. Still, for all the carnage the portly Canadian left in his Boston wake, at least he had the good sense not to blame manager Terry Francona or pitching coach John Farrell for his misadventures last season. Contrast that with everyone’s favorite Yankee, relief pitcher Kyle Farnsworth, who buoys the spirits of opposing fans everywhere, especially when he trots towards the mound in a close, late-inning game or lets loose with some pathetic excuse for why he’s the mayor of suck city.

Farnsworth, who last season allowed 108 runners to reach base in 60 innings, spoke yesterday to George King of the New York Post. In between his usual musings about 17-century French literature and the overlooked need for ethanol-based gasoline alternatives (no, not really), Farnsworth blamed his 4.80 ERA on former Yankee manager Joe Torre. Torre, it seems, had the gall to lose confidence in the Yankees’ middle reliever last season, refusing to pitch him on back-to-back days, even though the stats say, “Farnsworth sucks on back-to-back days.”