Like many people, I have too much clutter in my office, and, from time to time, I think it would be a good idea to get rid of it. The problem, of course, is that no one would want it, for the same reason I don’t want it. If you came over to my house, you might be interested in the dancing robot, rare Lester Young records, or my first edition of Melville’s “Omoo.” The problem for you would be that I like all of these things, and want to keep them. I’d be more interested in getting you to haul off the Risk game with missing pieces or my broken VCR. If you wanted anything worth having, I’d want you to pay through the nose for it, and even if you were willing to do so I’d probably still tell you, “No thanks.”

This, basically, is the problem all teams face when they’re considering a fire sale, and it’s the problem the Yankees are now confronting. Entering the All-Star break a game below .500, the Yankees are all but finished for the year, and the idea of trading off anything that isn’t nailed down to build for the future has a certain appeal. This makes a lot more sense in theory than it does in practice.

Lately, for instance, half of New York is wondering why the Yankees won’t just trade Alex Rodriguez for, say, the Dodgers’ farm system. He’s the best player in the league, he can void his contract at the end of the year, a team that isn’t contending has little use for him, and Mrs. Rodriguez wears naughty shirts to the ballpark — get rid of him! This all has a certain logic, but so does the idea that you should come to my house and pay a lot of money for the privilege of carting away the enormously heavy filing cabinet I no longer use.

Any team trading for Rodriguez — who has the right to veto any deal — would be renting, not buying. Tabloid follies and all, Rodriguez is 31 and will probably end the year having won his second MVP award in three years. Someone will be willing to offer him a better deal than his present one, which will pay him $71 million over the next three years, and his agent, Scott Boras, is aware of this. Rodriguez will be voiding his contract this fall. This means that no one will be willing to offer the Yankees anything really valuable for him. I just might be able to convince you to haul off that filing cabinet — but not to pay me more than about a dime for it.

Rodriguez presents a uniquely complicated problem. Two players at the end of their contracts, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera, present another. The problem for any team wanting to trade for the pair would be the same problem you’d have trying to get my Lester Young records — I want to keep them, and I have no reason to get rid of them. You’d have to offer me far, far more than they’re worth to get them. Posada and Rivera are Yankees in much the same sense that Derek Jeter is a Yankee, or that Yogi Berra was one — it would be unthinkable to trade them in the middle of a season, and unthinkable for them to play anywhere else. They’re also irreplaceable. If the Yankees hold hopes of contending next year (and one assumes they do), they’ll need to bring these two back, because better players aren’t, and won’t be, available. These two are going nowhere.

The fact of the expiring contract makes it possible to think about trading Rodriguez, Posada, and Rivera, but beyond them, there isn’t much. Almost any team would love to have Chien-Ming Wang, Robinson Cano, or Melky Cabrera, but trying to trade for one of them would be a bit like asking if you could buy my cat: Some things just aren’t for sale. After that trio, we’re quickly into the territory of the broken VCR. Even if Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui, for instance, weren’t locked up for two years and $26 million apiece, and even if they didn’t have no-trade clauses, the market for aging corner outfielders better suited to first base isn’t exactly hopping. As for Roger Clemens, it’s just not happening, for many obvious reasons, though I do love the idea of shipping him to the Red Sox for a player to be named later and letting the ornery old man end his career in Fenway, jerking tears from crusty Sox fans and causing sportswriters’ heads to explode, “Scanners”-style.

All this leaves two players who might fetch some real returns, and whom it would make sense for the Yankees to move: Bobby Abreu and Andy Pettitte.

Abreu, who will be a free agent at the end of the year, should be traded immediately. After a brutal first two months, he’s resumed hitting as he always does, and there isn’t a team in baseball that couldn’t use a hitter of his caliber over the second half. The Angels, Diamondbacks, and Dodgers all come to mind as contenders who could use a corner outfielder with a .400 on base average, and all of them have truly exceptional farm systems from which the Yankees just might be able to pluck the kind of fruit they did when they dealt Gary Sheffield to Detroit. Ship the man away before he forgets what the strike zone is for another two months.

Pettitte would obviously be a touchier player to trade. His Houston sojourn aside, you could make an argument that he should be classed with Rivera and Posada as irreplaceable players who ought not be traded for both sound baseball reasons and sentimentalones. This might be so, and he probably won’t be traded, but if there’s any temptation to throw a fire sale, the Yankees should at least explore the possibility. He’s owed about another $8 million this year and holds a $16 million player option for next year, a reasonable price for a top left-handed starter, and he would be perhaps the best pitcher on the market.

And that’s about it. There will be no fire sale: Abreu should and even might be dealt; one can almost imagine Pettitte or Mike Mussina moving on, and the likes of Mike Myers and Luis Vizcaino could certainly move on. But no future stars are going to make their way to the Bronx no matter what, and the only way Rodriguez is going anywhere is if some rival team’s executives simply lose their minds. You’re welcome to come collect that Risk set, though (missing pieces and all) — it will help distract from what will probably be a rather dreary second half.