My colleague, Orioles maven Rich Dubroff, is too much the serious chronicler of baseball to get much involved in what he so rightly calls “the silly story about [Alex] Rodriguez allegedly trying to flirt with fans during Saturday’s game.”

But I’m not.

The New York Post   headline on the initial report about the Yankees third baseman was “A-Rod plays field.” This story was made for the Post. Check out the breathless report:

“Shameless Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez was playing so poorly against the Detroit Tigers Saturday night that he was yanked from the lineup — but that didn’t stop him from trying to score.”

During the course of a tense Game 1 of the American League Championship Series at Yankee Stadium, Rodriguez reportedly had a batboy toss a ball to a couple of attractive women behind the dugout, seeking their phone numbers.

An unnamed witness to the exchange told the newspaper: “One of the girls, with darker blond hair, wrote ... on the ball and threw it back at A-Rod, who gave her a big smile.”

The flirting apparently stopped when Derek Jeter broke his ankle in the 12th inning. A-Rod is all about the team, after all.

End of story? Of course not.

The Post discovered the identity of the woman who apparently responded to A-Rod, announcing it subtly: “He sure can spot ’em! A-Rod’s flirt gal a bikini model.”

The first paragraph of the story: “A-Rod’s hitting stinks, but there’s nothing wrong with his eyes — he managed to pick out a bikini model to flirt with during last Saturday’s playoff game at Yankee Stadium.”

Rodriguez is supposed to be attached to Torrie Wilson, a former WWE performer and a model. (She dismisses the flirting report.) However, if this is true, it would seem that Rodriguez, though signed to a long-term contract, considers himself a free agent.