ORLANDO, Fla. — You betcha all those fresh quotes from legendary 2017-18 Yankees bust Sonny Gray made their way to the big city that the three-time All-Star right-hander despises.

It’s easy to hate the Yankees?

He never wanted to play in New York?

Five days after Gray trashed his time in the Bronx during his first interview since an offseason trade from the Cardinals to the Red Sox, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman was given an opportunity to retaliate.

Boy, did he ever.

On the opening day of the GM meetings, Cashman was asked Sunday night if he was aware how “anti-Yankee” Gray was in New York.

“At the end, he was,” Cashman said. “I saw his comments.”

That was the start of an answer that latest almost three minutes, a response to Gray’s telling Red Sox writers last week, “New York was, it just wasn’t a good situation for me, wasn’t a great setup for me and my family. I never wanted to go there in the first place.”

That’s not what Cashman was led to believe.

Gray, in fact, campaigned hard for a summer trade to the Yankees in 2017 when he was a former All-Star heading the Athletics’ rotation. Then after Cashman made it happen and Gray pitched poorly that season and the next, the pitcher admitted his desire to be a Yankee was all a lie.

During a late-season 2018 meeting at Yankee Stadium, in the office of Chad Bohling, the team’s director of organizational performance, Gray admitted to Cashman that his agent had told him to publicly campaign for a trade to the Yankees.

Cashman wound up dealing the unhappy and struggling pitcher to the Reds after the ’18 season.

Back in a small market, Gray was an All-Star in 2019 pitching for the Reds, then again in 2023 when he pitched for the small-market Twins. He’s 125-102 with a 3.58 ERA over his 13-year career, but was just 15-16 with a 4.51 ERA as a Yankee.

Here is Cashman’s response to Gray’s recent comments.

“If people want to turn the clock back and go find it in all the reporting when he was back with us … this isn’t like letting you behind the Iron Curtain. His college roommate at Vanderbilt was our minor-league video coordinator. So when he was with the A’s, he was telling our minor-league video coordinator, ‘You got to get me over to the Yankees. Tell Cash, get me over to the Yankees. I want out of Oakland. I want to win a world championship … blah, blah, blah.’

“It wasn’t just him. He was communicating that to a number of different people that was getting to us that he wants to be a Yankee. He is a hell of a pitcher, so we made a trade, acquired him. He said he was excited.

“The first time, it didn’t work out (in 2018). The following season, it didn’t work out. He never said anything other than he was struggling. We were trying to support him every step of the way.

“It was after a trade deadline had been completed, he asked to meet with me. He said, ‘Hey, can we talk?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ So we went into one of the offices by the training room, Chad Bohling’s office. Closed the door.

“He said, ‘I thought you were going to trade me.’ I was like, ‘Publicly, I’m trying to get pitching and bullpen (help). Why would I trade a starter when we need pitching badly?

“He goes, ‘I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never wanted to be … ‘ That’s when he told me he never wanted to be here. He hates New York. This is the worst place. He just sits in his hotel room. He told me all this stuff.

“I said, ‘It’s a little late now.’ Then I told him, ‘You said you wanted to be traded here. He said, ‘My agent, Bo McKinnis, told me to do that. He told me to lie. It wouldn’t be good for my free agency to say there’s certain places I don’t want to go to.’ I told him, ‘Nothing I can do about it now. I wish you would have told me well beforehand. I wish we knew this before we even tried to acquire you, that you never wanted to come here.’

“I said, ‘We’ll have to play the year out. This winter, I’ll do whatever I can to move you.’ We moved him to the Reds. That’s what happened.”

Traded again last week, Gray now is returning to a big market, Boston, to play for the Yankees’ biggest rival.

He says he’s happy “being in a place where it’s easy to hate the Yankees,” but let’s see if this is all a lie, too, if he again can’t handle the pressure of playing in Boston.