New York ? In most cities, the All-Star game comes with giddy welcoming stories anticipating the annual gathering of baseball’s best. The front page of one New York newspaper Sunday was devoted to baseball, all right, but with a different sort of headline: “A-ROD LOVE NEST.”

Only in New York, where players’ off-the-field lives and wives are scrutinized as intensely as their batting averages and won-lost records. And while the All-Star game is a season highlight in the Big Apple, it’s also an interruption of the daily obsession of the pennant races.

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman stood behind home plate, explaining why he hoped this wouldn’t be the ballpark’s national send-off.

“Certainly we’re hopeful that we can get our act together,” he said, “and extend it into October.”

As the scoreboard in center field points out, just 32 regular-season games remain at Yankee Stadium, the 85-year-old living monument to baseball history. There have been 106 World Series games played at the big ballyard in the Bronx – more than one-third of the American League’s home total of 300.

“I’ve had a lot of great memories here and a lot of sad memories,” said Hall of Famer George Brett, who hit three homers during a 1980 playoff game at Yankee Stadium but is best remembered for the 1983 Pine Tar Game, when his go-ahead, ninth-inning homer was disallowed by umpires, then reinstated by the AL president.

While 13 of the Yankees’ last 14 regular-season games sold out and the team is headed to its fourth straight 4 million-plus season at the box office, the stadium was at-best half-filled for the All-Star Futures Game, which had an announced attendance of 48,383. Season ticket-holders had to buy seats for Sunday as part of strips that included today’s home run derby and Tuesday night’s All-Star game, the commissioner’s office said.