NEW YORK — News of the Alex Rodriguez suspension left a bittersweet taste in the mouths of New York baseball fans Monday, hours before the slugger’s first game with the Yankees since his hip surgery.

As the team prepared to face the Chicago White Sox, emotions about the return of the 38-year-old third baseman ranged from unconditional love to outright animosity.

“They should ban him for life and take his money — even the millions they owe him,” said Edgar Rivera, a Puerto Rican-born New Yorker who describes himself as “a die-hard Yankees fan since the 1970s, whether they win or lose.”

“I feel cheated; nobody was seeing anything,” Rivera said, his face twisted with anger. “The MLB is to blame too. I mean, c’mon!”

But Jersey City, N.J., resident Luis Velazquez, who was visiting the Yankees’ store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, said he’d wear his Rodriguez’s No. 13 jersey while watching the game at home.

After the 211-game suspension was announced Monday by Major League Baseball, A-Rod’s jersey was prominently displayed by the entrance. But the store hadn’t sold any as of late afternoon.

“I don’t care what people think, I still love A-Rod,” Velazquez said with a wry grin. “He’s a nice guy; he made a mistake — I don’t know what happened in his mind — and he’s paying for it.”

Rodriguez was suspended through 2014 and All-Stars Nelson Cruz, Jhonny Peralta and Everth Cabrera were banned 50 games apiece Monday when Major League Baseball disciplined 13 players in a drug case — the most sweeping punishment since the Black Sox scandal nearly a century ago.

A total of 18 players have been sanctioned for their relationships to a closed Florida anti-aging clinic accused of distributing banned performing-enhancing drugs. Rodriguez says he’ll appeal his suspension.

Many Yankees fans say they’re ready to see the star slugger go.

Jarett Anderson, an employee of a Modell’s sports store in midtown Manhattan, said baseball’s highest-paid player “should just leave the team; the Yankees should just let him go. Why keep him playing?”

At the Yankees’ store, Velazquez was worried about Rodriguez as a bad role model for young fans.

“When you play baseball and you love the game, you’re supposed to play it straight,” he said. “What will kids think now?”

Rodriguez is set to appeal his career-crippling drug ban as he resumes playing with the team, saying he’s going “to give them my best.”