Earlier this week, I was asked to contribute a vignette to a collection about Alex Rodriguez. My immediate thought: “Only one?”

I’ve been on the A-Rod ride from the very start of his Yankees journey. Actually, as I wrote, my initial substantive interaction with him occurred less than a month before he became a Yankee. Man, has it been fun. He has been easily the most fascinating person I’ve ever covered, and he set the bar very high for future challengers.

So which vignettes missed my cut? Here are my four other finalists, in chronological order:

1. Shea Stadium, July 2004. During the Flushing leg of a Subway Series, I kibitzed with A-Rod before one of the games (I can’t remember which one, sorry). I already had learned A-Rod suffered from what a friend of mine refers to as “diploma envy.” Having jumped straight from Westminster Christian School to pro ball, he loved talking about college and even visiting campuses. We had spoken multiple times about my alma mater, the University of Michigan.

On this day, we were chatting about A-Rod and his then-wife Cynthia expecting their first child. I had become a first-time father myself the prior October and felt quite a bond with those in a similar stage. So I asked A-Rod whether they planned to have the baby in New York or Miami. A-Rod replied Miami.

“Oh, OK,” I replied. “Because I was going to tell you that my wife gave birth to my son at Cornell and we had a great experience there.”

A-Rod did a double-take, like Mike Myers in a “Saturday Night Live” skit.

“You went to Cornell?” he asked.

I paused for a moment, confused, before realizing where the conversation went wrong. “No, my son was born at Cornell,” I said. “I went to Michigan.”

“Oh, right,” A-Rod said, and he added with a smile: “If you had gone to Cornell, I would’ve really been impressed.”

2. Chase Field, March 2006. The inaugural World Baseball Classic featured a Team USA starring A-Rod, Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens and Chipper Jones, among many others, and the team headed first to Phoenix to hold workouts before playing the first round there.

Arizona stands out because it never moves its clocks, and I consequently struggle with time whenever I’m there. On this morning, I hustled to arrive at the Diamondbacks’ ballpark for the start of Team USA’s practice.

It turned out, because of my inability to master the clock, I showed up an hour earlier than I intended. The press box was empty. The workout wouldn’t commence for a while.

Then I looked on the field, and there were two people there: A-Rod and Steve Odgers, a longtime trainer who works with Scott Boras (A-Rod’s agent at the time). A-Rod, the hardest worker I ever saw in the baseball world, had shown up to do his own training regimen before joining his temporary teammates for the group session. Suddenly, I felt glad that I had messed up my time management. I stood in front of the third-base dugout, watched A-Rod go through all of his drills and appreciated that, in his own complicated way — a way that featured illegal performance-enhancing drugs, it turned out — this was an extremely talented guy determined to get everything out of that talent.

3. Reebok Sports Club, Manhattan, Nov. 2008. For a while, A-Rod and I went to the same gym on the Upper West Side. I was there more than he was, since, unlike him, I didn’t own multiple homes around the country. Occasionally, though, I would see him there and we’d exchange friendly greetings. Once, I stumbled upon him in the locker area, and we started talking about the Yankees’ crucial offseason.

This was the winter in which the Yankees wound up signing A.J. Burnett, CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira to huge contracts. Early on, you might recall, Teixeira ranked as less of a priority, especially after the Yankees traded for Nick Swisher. A-Rod was envisioning a Yankees rotation topped by Sabathia and Burnett. Specifically, he thought of what it would be like as an opposing hitter having to face those two guys back to back. He likened it to how the Yankees felt going to Toronto, knowing they had to face Roy Halladay and Burnett in consecutive days.

It was great stuff, the same sort of clear, strong insight that made A-Rod such a hit as a Fox broadcaster last year.

All of a sudden, a voice piped in. From a stranger, a guy who just happened to store his stuff in a locker bay that now had Alex Rodriguez holding court about baseball. I wish I could remember exactly what the gentleman said as he invited himself into our dialogue; it was something innocuous about baseball. What I do remember is A-Rod’s reaction. He scowled and said, “Oh, so now you’re part of this conversation?”

The poor guy slinked away. A-Rod probably lost a fan that day. He obviously could’ve handled the situation better. But the episode actually made me like A-Rod more. He was utterly human, again and again.

4. La Marina restaurant, Manhattan, Nov. 2013. The craziest time of the A-Rod era? Easiest question ever: His Biogenesis battle. Lawsuits against Major League Baseball, Bud Selig and Yankees team physician Christopher Ahmad. Protesters shouting outside MLB headquarters, holding signs. I loved every second of it.

During that period, before he memorably walked out of his own hearing, I spent some time with A-Rod on a Sunday as he met with the family of a missing autistic child. Sadly, the child’s body was found a couple of months later.

After he spent time with the family — The Post was invited with the family’s blessing in the hopes of generating more publicity about the case — we all sat down for lunch in the restaurant. The family members talked mostly among themselves, so A-Rod turned to me and asked, “Who are we getting this offseason?”

“Well,” I said, smiling awkwardly, “Are you going to be on the team?” A-Rod was challenging the 211-game suspension that MLB had imposed on him.

He nodded knowingly. He got it. But he wanted to talk baseball. Talking baseball relaxed him. This was the winter when the Yankees went nuts and proceeded to sign Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Masahiro Tanaka while letting Robinson Cano go to Seattle.

“I think we should sign Nelson Cruz,” A-Rod said. My first reaction, to myself: “He’s recommending another Biogenesis guy!”

Cruz wound up signing a one-year, $8 million contract with the Orioles and proved one of the best free-agent bargains ever: AL-leading 40 homers, 108 RBIs, seventh place in MVP voting. Cruz then leveraged that great 2014 into a four-year, $58 million package with the Mariners, for whom he has played even better.

Just for argument’s sake, in what has proven to be a haunting offseason for the Yankees, what if they had followed A-Rod’s counsel and signed Cruz to a two-year deal (the Orioles waited until spring training to get that bargain on Cruz) while re-signing Cano (a big A-Rod disciple) and adding McCann and Tanaka? Think they’d be better off now?

Whatever you want to say about A-Rod, the man knows his baseball.

Let’s catch up on Pop Quiz questions:

1. From Gary Mintz of South Huntington: In the 1989 film “Parenthood,” Gil (Steve Martin) flashes back to his childhood and remembers attending a Cardinals game. What Cardinals player from the ’50s and ’60s can be heard getting introduced by the public-address announcer?

2. From Gary Mintz again: In a 1988 episode of “Married With Children,” Al (Ed O’Neill) and Steve (David Garrison) praise the feats of a legendary Cubs player. Name the player.

3. One more from Gary Mintz: In a 1962 episode of “The Twilight Zone” entitled “The Little People,” a spacecraft navigator says he’d love to take possession of an entire major league ballpark. Name the ballpark.

4. From Andy Romanic of Freeport: Name the cartoon character that appeared in an animated short about baseball in 1922.

Pop Quiz answers:

1. Ken Boyer

2. Ron Santo

3. Yankee Stadium

4. Felix the Cat

If you have a tidbit that connects baseball with popular culture, please send it to me at kdavidoff@nypost.com.