“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Prudence”

“Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table”

“Once the trust goes out of a relationship, it’s really no fun lying to them anymore.” — Norm Peterson, “Cheers”

OR, TO paraphrase another great work of American letters, “Stand By Me,” here is the best way to describe the Yankees and the third baseman to whom they are paying $28 million this year:

“The relationship isn’t sick. The relationship isn’t sleeping. The relationship is dead.”

And you thought the last remnants of the grand old Bronx Zoo Yankees died with George Steinbrenner, right? Well, what we saw yesterday was a chapter that would’ve made the vaudevillian George-Billy-Reggie triangle stand and applaud and shake their heads and mutter, emotionally, “Why couldn’t we think of that?”

And it was a verse that would’ve made the best of Steinbrenner’s more sinister years bow with respect. You don’t think the old man, circa 1986 or so, wouldn’t have admired the possibility the Yankees might try to sabotage their best player? Go ahead and Google the name “Howie Spira.” We’ll be waiting for you when you get back.

Yes, this was a vintage brand of Yankees madness, one we thought had long been discarded in favor of corporate competence and roster after roster of players who all but genuflected before donning pinstripes. The Yankees have done a tremendous job across the past two decades distancing themselves from the calliope tents that used to regularly mar the baseball efforts in The Bronx.

And yesterday, you could almost hear the words of the great Graig Nettles: “When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a baseball player and join the circus. With the Yankees I have accomplished both.”

Who is lying? Who is telling the truth? Who’s zooming who? How can you possibly know? That’s the genius of this whole misdirection play. Let’s review here for a moment:

1. Alex Rodriguez looked ready to return from the disabled list last week.

2. Then he claimed his quad was hurt (Key point: He said this).

3. The Yankees’ doctors performed an MRI exam. They saw a strain.

4. An A-Rod source told The Post’s Joel Sherman the slugger would get a second opinion. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told Sherman A-Rod had told him directly he was not getting a second opinion. Then A-Rod’s people told Sherman, in essence: We were telling you the truth. We were lying to Cashman.

5. This is where it gets good.

6. Yesterday A-Rod showed his MRI to a New Jersey doctor named Michael Gross who, during the course of a day when we will have to assume he wasn’t scheduled to visit anyone who was actually sick, said at various times that: a) he saw no strain; b) he wasn’t offering a second opinion; c) gosh, there sure are a lot of reporters who work in New York; d) just because he didn’t see a strain didn’t mean A-Rod wasn’t hurt; e) actually said this, to a reporter from the Bergen Record, his hometown paper: “I thought it would be fun. It’s my five minutes of fame”; and f) told our own Ken Davidoff: “I’m sure [the Yankees doctors] did see something.”

Oh yes, and it turns out the good doctor was reprimanded by the state medical board in February for “failing to adequately ensure proper patient treatment involving the prescribing of hormones including steroids.”

Of course he was.

Good luck trying to figure out where within all of this the truth lies. As Jim Garrison once said: We are through the looking glass, people. This is the one thing we know with absolute certainty: Alex Rodriguez and his advisers trust the Yankees about as much as Chase Manhattan Bank used to trust Willie Sutton. And the Yankees? It’s safe to say A-Rod won’t be nominated for Employee of the Month for July, so there goes that parking spot.

And here’s something else to consider: We are now approaching word 674 of this column on Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez in the summer of 2013. And you know what words haven’t been used yet? In no particular order: “Biogenesis,” “Bosch,” “Braun,” “HGH,” “suspension,” “lifetime,” “ban,” “PEDs” and “cheater.”

You don’t suppose that might be the point, do you?

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com