NY- At least twice during the past year, illegal bookmakers came out of the shadows and into the world of baseball to pressure Paul Lo Duca into paying gambling debts, several sources have told the Daily News.

The first incident was in June 2005 when a man called the Florida Marlins to tell them Lo Duca, then with the team, owed him money, which was immediately reported to Major League Baseball, several sources familiar with the incident have said. The Marlins referred all questions about the Brooklyn-born Lo Duca to Major League Baseball.

In May, a man from Arizona, where Lo Duca was raised and his parents still live, called associates of Lo Duca’s and demanded payment for another alleged debt, and threatened to go to Shea Stadium to intimidate Lo Duca into paying.

One major league source said someone did appear at a Mets game and confronted Lo Duca from the seats behind the backstop during batting practice earlier this year. Lo Duca declined to comment through a Mets spokesman, and Mets front office personnel, security officials and NYPD officers at Shea said they did not know of such an incident.

If Lo Duca had been betting with illegal bookies, it would mark an ominous turn for the Mets’ All-Star catcher following one of the most embarrassing weeks of his life. Stories about his pending divorce and alleged infidelities, followed by gambling allegations, have knocked the war in Lebanon off the front page of some newspapers, and Lo Duca has repeatedly said he loves his estranged wife and gambles legally only on horse racing.

Before Wednesday’s Mets game, general manager Omar Minaya told reporters that the team had looked into gambling incidents involving Lo Duca, and were told by Major League Baseball and the catcher himself that he had not broken MLB rules.

But a former teammate of Lo Duca’s told The News earlier this week that while the backstop’s love of the horses is legendary, he has also enjoyed high-stakes card games on team flights and occasionally went to gamble in casinos with other teammates.

When confronted about the demanding phone calls, Lo Duca, who signed a three-year, $18 million contract in January 2005, said he had no such debts and that the calls were actually in reference to a friend of his with gambling issues, one source familiar with the incidents said.

“He said it had nothing to do with him,” the source told The News.

MLB officials declined to comment.

“We don’t talk about investigations involving players,” spokesman Rich Levin said. Levin would not say whether MLB is actively investigating Lo Duca, but MLB sources told the Daily News earlier this week that officials would be in touch with the Mets over the gambling allegations first reported in the Daily News earlier this week.

Lo Duca’s agent, Andrew Mongelluzzi, who began representing the player earlier this year, did not return a call to his office for comment.

Sources also said they were not sure whether the two incidents involved the same bookie or how much Lo Duca allegedly owed.

The sources also said they did not know what Lo Duca was betting on, and said they were not aware of any accusation that Lo Duca had wagered on baseball. Betting on baseball can lead to a one-year suspension, while betting on one’s own team could get the player banned for life.

A hint of Lo Duca’s possible gambling issues also appears in the divorce papers filed by his wife, Sonia. The petition she filed specifically asks the court to prevent Lo Duca from incurring any indebtedness, making withdrawals from accounts or entering safe deposit boxes. Her attorney said earlier this week that those and other provisions were “standard fare,” but Patrick O’Reilly, chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Family Law Section, said the request for financial prohibitions in Sonia Lo Duca’s divorce petition could be a sign of trouble.

“Usually if there’s a gambling problem, then there’s the contention that that person is wastefully dissipating the marital estate,” he said. “You don’t want somebody making transactions with money while you’re trying to find it.”

The petition, filed in Texas, does not ask for a restraining order, however, which is common in the state when a spouse fears the assets will be wasted, said family law attorney Sue M. Hall of San Antonio.

“None of this is highly aggressive or out of the ordinary,” Hall said, after reviewing the Lo Duca filing. “It’s just language that attorneys feel helps protect the person who is not in charge of the assets.”