Down in Arizona recently, the stunning news of Andrew Luck’s retirement from the NFL struck a baseball nerve.

“Watching that Andrew Luck thing, it reminded me of how I felt at some points,” Ike Davis said last week in a telephone interview. “Injuries had taken away a lot of my love for the game. I didn’t want to keep doing it just to do it. I’d like to be healthy for the rest of my life. I’d like to play sports with my kids, if I ever have them.”

Yeah, Davis sounded like the same guy — forthright, forthcoming and self-deprecating — who made a strong first impression at Citi Field nine years ago, only to ultimately leave Queens in disappointment. Now running a “very small” real estate business, he said, “I’m doing well,” and his tone aligned with his words.

He agreed to chat in order to promote his appearance in “Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel,” a documentary about Team Israel’s journey through the 2017 World Baseball Classic: Becoming the first Israeli team to qualify for the main tournament and then performing surprisingly well, advancing to the second round. The film — which in my opinion is quite enjoyable even if you don’t feel a connection to either the WBC or Israel — will open Friday in eight theaters across the Tri-State area. On Sunday at 5.p.m., The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot will host a special screening of the film at Quad Cinema that will feature an appearance by former Yankee Ron Blomberg as well as a question-and-answer session with the documentary’s directors.

Davis’ major-league career had ended, not that he knew it then, by the time he began his WBC adventure. He easily was the most accomplished position player on the club, which consisted of American Jews. That he was not the most schooled in Judaism (his mother Millie is Jewish and his father, the former Yankees pitcher Ron Davis, is not) made Davis a particularly compelling character in the film, especially when the team traveled to Israel prior to the tournament.

“In Phoenix (where he grew up), you didn’t see devoted Jewish people like that,” Davis said. “They’d go to temple, but they wouldn’t talk about it. They wouldn’t wear things (denoting their Judaism). You go to Israel, and people were proud of things that made them look Jewish.”

Furthermore, Davis observed, “The interactions between the Palestinian and Jewish people in Jerusalem is a lot different than I would’ve imagined it, living in the states. The people were pretty nice to each other, and they’re right next to each other. It’s hard because [of] the history, but it’s a lot more complicated than I would’ve thought.”

As for the actual baseball, which became a bigger part of the film than originally envisioned, “We had a great time,” Davis said. “It’s pretty nice when no one expects you to do anything and you do something.” Israel defeated South Korea, Chinese Taipei, the Netherlands and, in the second round, Cuba before falling to the Netherlands and Japan to get eliminated.

Davis’ major-league career went in the opposite direction: With high hopes as the 18th overall selection of the 2008 draft, and a promising rookie year in 2010 (a .264/.351/.440 slash line, with 19 homers in 523 at-bats), plus his interesting biography, he stood as the poster boy for the next era of Mets prosperity. Then, on May 10, 2011, he and David Wright collided while pursuing a Troy Tulowitzki pop fly at Coors Field, and Davis left the game with what the Mets called a strained left calf. It turned out to be a left ankle injury serious enough that it required microfracture surgery to repair.

And that turned out to be Davis’ line of demarcation.

“You read every article ever written past my ankle injury, it’s all negative,” he said. “It’s pretty simple to me: My career wasn’t the same after the microfracture surgery on my ankle. That happened. I didn’t run for six or seven months, and then I got valley fever.

“I felt like the last three, four, five years of my career, I wasn’t even myself. I tried to compete as hard as I could, but it wasn’t very fun. I wasn’t the same talent I used to be. I lost a step. When you’re up at the top level like that, if you lose a step, you’re done.”

I pointed out to Davis that he hit 32 homers in 2012, after the injury.

“Did you watch me that year?” he responded, and he was right. He had become a far lesser overall hitter by that juncture, his on-base percentage plummeting from .351 in 2010 to .308 in 2012. He lost the multi-year first-base battle to Lucas Duda in 2014, when the Mets traded him to the Pirates, and his last major-league game experience came as a Yankee, with an eight-game cameo in 2016.

“I feel great about my career,” Davis said, as he expressed pride in how he handled his adversity. He occasionally travels to New York and still gets recognized sometimes, he said.

“They always tell me they wish I was still part of the organization,” Davis said. “They say, ‘I wish you were still there.’ That’s a nice, cool compliment to have.”

If those fans see Davis’ film debut, they’ll see that warmth they sensed from the stands. And they’ll get to root for him once again, even if they already know the ending.

Let’s catch up on Pop Quiz questions:

From Gary Mintz of South Huntington: A 2018 episode of “The Goldbergs” mentions a Hall of Famer who endorsed a diet plan. Name the Hall of Famer.

From David Schwartz of Teaneck, NJ: Name the future Hall of Famer who appeared as himself in two 1964 episodes of “The Donna Reed Show.”

From Gary Mintz again: The 1999 film “Analyze This” mentions the move of a baseball team from one city to another as a seminal event in world history. Name the team.

Unlike the ultra-expedient Papa Clicker, I am slow in getting through the steady array of baseball books out there. I recently finished the 2017 release “Fantasy Life,” a companion piece of sorts to “Moneyball” that focuses on the A’s draft class from the 2002 season described in Michael Lewis’ classic. “Fantasy Life” features photographs of those draftees by Tabitha Soren (Lewis’ wife and, for those of us of a certain age, a legendary MTV reporter) and a short story by Dave Eggers. In the spirit of Andrew Marchand’s dad, I give it a 4.3 out of 5 rating.

Your Pop Quiz answers:

Tommy Lasorda

Willie Mays

The Dodgers

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