HBO’s Alex Rodriguez docuseries offers ‘open book’ — and stunning Yankees admission

Alex Rodriguez said if he could do it all over again, he “probably would have just retired” after winning the 2009 World Series with the Yankees.

“I would have avoided a lot of nightmares,” Rodriguez said in the new HBO documentary, “Alex vs. ARod,” with the first of three episodes set to air Thursday night.

Perhaps it was A-Rod that kept him from doing so.

Of course, what followed was Rodriguez getting caught in the Biogenesis scandal for taking performance-enhancing drugs, then trying to sue MLB over his suspension that ended up being 162 games, the entirety of the 2014 season.

The complicated journey that led Rodriguez to that saga, and the therapy he has done since then to come out the other side, is at the heart of the documentary, though he knows not everyone will buy the transformation he insists he has undergone.

“I know the haters are sitting there saying, ‘Yeah, BS. I don’t believe it,’ ” Rodriguez says at the end of the third episode. “I’m sure there’s people watching here that are like, what do you call it, hate-watch? No matter what I say, they’re going to spin it to why they hate me more. They’re going to think I’m slippery, and they’re going to find something in this documentary to say, ‘See? I told you so. That’s why that guy’s an a–-hole. I don’t trust him, I don’t like him.’

“And that’s fine. But I’m done saying I’m sorry. I’m done. New day, moving on. F–-king new decade. I’m in a great place. … I choose to ignore those that will always be haters. God bless you.”

Among the notable storylines in the documentary, in which Derek Jeter, Ken Griffey Jr., Lou Piniella, Katie Couric and Rodriguez’s ex-wife Cynthia, among others, are interviewed:

• The crew follows Rodriguez back to Evergreen, Col., where he went through years of therapy with the late Dr. David Schnarch, whom he says “saved my life.” The two started working together a few years before Rodriguez’s suspension.

“He was such a truth-teller, and I wasn’t used to that,” Rodriguez said. “He would just throw arrows right between your eyes: ‘When you talk, you sound like you’re full of s-–t, because you are.’ In hindsight, I was so f–-king slippery. I’d think I could bulls-–t him, think I was smarter than him. He just would never let me slide.”

The two dug into Rodriguez’s early life and the issues that stemmed from his father, Victor, abandoning him and his family when Rodriguez was 10 years old.

With the help of Rodriguez’s then-wife, Cynthia, he and his father reconnected in 2000 on a road trip in Minnesota. Rodriguez, then playing with the Mariners, had a strong series and remembered looking up at his father sitting behind the dugout.

“This is what you walked away from,” Rodriguez remembers thinking. “F–-k off.”

• Rodriguez recalled meeting Tony Bosch, the founder of Biogenesis, in 2010 and initially declining his offer to use HGH. But a few weeks later, with a hip injury still hurting his play, he decided to take it and thought he would only do it for another month or so.

“At the time, I knew it was a very, very risky thing to do,” Rodriguez said. “But if this is actually going to make me feel better and help me get out of bed and help me not be in pain, then f–-k it. I’ll risk it.”

• Erik LeDrew, the director and co-executive producer along with Gotham Chopra, said Rodriguez was “an open book” for the documentary.

As for Rodriguez, he claims he has no regrets from his career, only “lessons.”

“To look at me, single mom, food stamps at 12, I’ve done pretty well,” Rodriguez said on the red carpet of the premiere screening earlier this week. “At 50, it’s easier for me to say that. But without the mistakes, I wouldn’t have gone into therapy. I cost myself the Hall of Fame, but I bought myself a beautiful life on the back nine.”