This is how it ends for Alex Rodriguez? With a Yankees-orchestrated whimper instead of an all-out public relations war?

Hard to believe. For the moment, let’s not.

It is possible that Rodriguez — at 41 and having been, as he put it, “to hell and back” — talked himself into being “at peace” about walking away after Friday night’s game against Tampa Bay at Yankee Stadium.

But after a long and tumultuous career fueled by what even amateur psychologists could positively diagnose as a chronic inner turbulence, we suspect this was A-Rod merely acceding to the franchise’s wishes to move beyond him without stirring up memories of his contentious and litigious past.

Four home runs short of 700, 18 shy of Babe Ruth, this image- and achievement-obsessed man, once photographed kissing his reflection in the mirror, is going to retire just because Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman decided it was time?