CHICAGO – Good for Jerry Reese. Good for John Mara. Good for the Giants. For every athlete, even the great ones, there comes a time when the world stops falling over itself trying to please you, when the endless string of enablers finally steps forward and says, “Enough is enough.”

That is where the Giants are now.

Michael Strahan wants more money. Or he just wants a little vacation. Or he simply wants the kind of attention Tiki Barber received last year when Barber first uttered the word “retirement.” Or there’s some other agenda at work, because with Strahan there is always an agenda.

Whatever.

This is what the Giants are saying to all of that.

“Enough,” they are saying in a united blue voice. “Enough.”

Players have been trying to win this fight from the beginning of time, and they are as hapless and as winless as the ’76 Buccaneers. There isn’t a fan alive who’s ever sympathized with the plight of an athlete. Ever.

There’s never been anyone in New York City more beloved than Joe DiMaggio. The mere mention of his name is still enough to bring tears to the eyes of an entire generation of Yankees fans. Eight years after his death, his spirit still lives in the souls of so many people.

Yet, Joe DiMaggio was booed when he was young. Mercilessly. Relentlessly. And he was booed because during the spring of his third year as a Yankee, in 1938, he had the gall to hold out. He wanted $40,000.

“Preposterous,” the Yankees owner, Jacob Ruppert, said at the time. “That’s more money than Mr. Lou Gehrig makes.”

“Well,” DiMaggio said, “that means Mr. Gehrig is terribly underpaid.”

It was perhaps the pithiest line of DiMaggio’s life, but nobody was laughing. He was right, of course. Gehrig spent his entire career criminally underpaid and so, for that matter, did DiMaggio. You know how many fans thought so? Exactly zero.

In the long and colorful history of salary disputes in New York City, only once has a player even remotely gotten the benefit of the doubt from the fans: 1977, Tom Seaver, and that was only because Mets fans had grown truly disgusted by the fumblings and bumblings of M. Donald Grant.

Once. In over 100 years. That’s it. That’s all.

So if Strahan is truly trying to get something tangible out of this, he doesn’t only have the stubborn resilience of the Giants’ brass to contend with, but what is surely a big blue wall of indifference from Giants fans, too.

Now, make no mistake, Giants fans want Strahan to play football for Big Blue this year. The difference in the team’s performance the past few years with Strahan and without him is tangible. And no one has ever denied that Strahan is one of the greatest Giants of all.

But Strahan has also long been one of the great clubhouse lawyers of all time, and it is worth remembering that this isn’t the first time he’s behaved badly in the midst of a money grab.

Back in February of 2002, the Giants had a seven-year, $56 million contract on the table for Strahan. The Giants wanted a two-tiered salary structure that would guarantee only about $17 million of that money, but Wellington Mara assured Strahan that was simply so the team could make sure to sign key free agents – notably kicker Morten Anderson – that offseason.

Mara’s word was plenty good enough for generation after generation of Giants players. It wasn’t good enough for Strahan. So that original offer was rescinded, and replaced a few months later with one that guaranteed more money in front and about $10 million less overall. In the bargain, it meant the Giants couldn’t keep Andersen, which would prove to be haunting throughout the ill-fated 2002 season.

Strahan was perfectly willing to sign his name on that contract. He was perfectly content to pocket the $20.5 million that came in the first three years of the deal, which made him one of the best-paid defensive players in history to that point, at a time when Dwight Freeney was still chasing quarterbacks at Syracuse.

Of course, this could all be a laugh, a lark, a game, something to keep Strahan’s mind occupied and his body out of the 90-degree Albany heat a little while longer. He wouldn’t be the first veteran football player to be allergic to training camp. Maybe another veteran, we could believe that.

With this veteran, we can never be so sure.

Mike Vaccaro’s e-mail address is Michael.vaccaro@nypost.com. His new book, “1941: The Greatest Year in Sports,” is available at amazon.com and

at bookstores everywhere.