New York's Alex Rodriguez watches the flight of his 52nd home run Sunday in Kansas City, Mo.

Over and over this season, Alex Rodriguez has been asked to explain and dissect how he turned a tortuous 2006 season into a historical 2007 one.

And over and over, A-Rod’s piercing green eyes stare straight ahead, his smile freezes and he lists off a familiar handful of predictable answers. He’s stopped overanalyzing himself. He’s enjoying the game more. He’s finally comfortable in the scrutiny of New York.

Then, before the Yankees completed their sweep of the Royals Sunday afternoon, before A-Rod had hit his seventh home run in five games to raise his major league-leading totals to 52 home runs and 140 RBIs, Rodriguez revealed one more reason for his contentment.

“I think my relationship with Joe has grown tremendously,” he told The Record.

Rodriguez was talking about Yankees manager Joe Torre, the same man who dropped him to eighth in the batting order in the Yankees’ final playoff game a year ago, a Game 4 AL Division Series loss in Detroit. If that was rock bottom, however, the two veteran baseball men have forged a path to a new friendship this season. No longer does Torre measure his words when speaking about his cleanup hitter, worried how they might impact a fragile psyche. No more does Rodriguez wonder how much his manager truly trusts him, confident without question that he does.

“That makes me feel good,” Torre said inside the tunnel near the visitors’ clubhouse in Kansas City. “You never know when you’re trying to have a relationship, and understand it’s still manager-player, that the most important thing for me is to have the player understand I’m always there for him.

“I think he’s more open this year. That’s probably more because instead of my trying to figure out what buttons to push or what tone of voice to use, I just sensed from spring training he was more relaxed and seemed more into having a little more of a good time. I think he’s trusting more.”

Nurturing this particular link has been a challenge for Torre, who so deftly has managed many other superstars. But where he grew along with the likes of Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera, where he quickly clicked with big-ticket additions such as Roger Clemens, Jason Giambi and Mike Mussina, the A-Rod phenomenon was just different.

“I think he has been the hardest, only because I’ve never had somebody who was just a lightning rod like he is and at the center of everything, good, bad or indifferent,” Torre said. “I try to speak in a positive way about everybody and maybe a lot of times I didn’t take the right road with him because I wasn’t sure. I was trying to find a way to make him comfortable. But his eyes right now are just without strain for me.”

The joy of Rodriguez is impossible to miss. He laughs with Jeter in the dugout. He laughs when Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera sandwich him with their own post-home run dance. He laughs when an entire bullpen gets in on the latest A-Rod joke, imitating the shoulder stretch Rodriguez did after a recent tough slide into second base only to hit a home run his next at-bat.

“It’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen a team make more fun of one guy than this team,” Rodriguez said. “They love making fun of me, and I enjoy that. I’m not good at making fun of them, so I just take it. I’m a goofy guy. I make a lot of mistakes. Sometimes you have to be able to laugh at yourself. In the past, maybe I haven’t done that enough.”

Cabrera and Cano deserve a lot of credit for bringing out A-Rod’s exuberance. The three, often heard chattering in Spanish, have become good friends. “I love them. They’re amazing,” Rodriguez said. “They both lighten me up, and I need that. I can be too tight.”

Cano admitted many of his friends outside the Yankees have a predisposed dislike of Rodriguez. “Some people say to me ‘he’s a mean guy.’ I say no, ‘you’ve got to understand you’re not going to please everybody,’ ” Cano said. “He is like my big brother. He helps me all the time.”

Whether A-Rod’s joy can translate into postseason success or whether it can convince him to sign a contract extension remains to be seen. But it certainly can’t hurt.