TAMPA — Carlos Beltran leaves a dugout conversation with Brian McCann to go fetch a baseball.
It is late Saturday morning at Steinbrenner Field. The bus for Kissimmee and a game against the Astros has left hours ago, the batting practice session for those left behind — most of the regular position players — is nearing an end.
Beltran returns and for the next 10 minutes — using the baseball as a prop — expresses and demonstrates his thought processes on adjusting to pitches in and away. McCann is a rapt pupil, looking like a fixated A-baller rather than an 1,100-plus-game veteran recently rewarded with a six-year, $85 million Yankees pact.
Afterward, McCann sums up, “what an amazing teammate and person. That is his reputation in the game.”
It is — except where it is not. As a Met, Beltran was tough, clutch and a terrific teammate. That was reality. Yet it is not the perception, and it is perception that has won out, lingered to define his first New York tour — facts be damned.
He is among the best Mets ever — don’t believe it, go look it up. That .869 OPS is fifth best in team history, second among outfielders to Darryl Strawberry’s .878.
He played through significant pain — again, really, go look it up, the Mets were in last place when his face was crushed in a collision with Mike Cameron in August 2005. He could have taken off the rest of what already was a trying first year in New York without much question. He played six days later. Not to mention he pushed his body to play on wounded knees in 2011, making himself attractive enough that the Mets were able to swap him to San Francisco for Zack Wheeler — a parting gift.
And — again, go look it up — he was terrific in the 2006 playoffs. Pretty much every hitter in history is getting locked up by a full-count curve as good as the one Adam Wainwright threw to end NLCS Game 7 — really ignite a Beltran-hate-a-thon both irrational and unsupportable, yet ceaseless. Not every hitter in history — not close — would have produced the .978 OPS in that postseason as Beltran did.
“I felt really, really bad for him,” said Willie Randolph, his Mets manager then, a special Yankees spring coach now. “All people remember is that pitch. Come on. He carried us so many times on his back. He felt his responsibility to the team deeply. He took a lot of pride in that responsibility.”
This is the disconnect when it comes to Beltran. He — more than anyone — became the target of fan frustration for the team not finishing off a pennant in 2006, steadily sliding toward collapse and irrelevance soon after.
He says he has “turned the page,” but the bitterness is clear when he says he did not like “the way ownership and the front office handled” two 2010 incidents: saying he went for knee surgery without the Mets’ blessing and skipping a visit to Walter Reed Medical Center to see wounded veterans. Beltran said he had permission from the Mets for the surgery and to miss Walter Reed to set up his academy in Puerto Rico.
“At the end of the day, [the Mets] tried to put a perception out about me in the papers,” Beltran said. “It is what it is. I have dealt with it. I cleared the air with the people who mistreated me. I don’t wish anything bad to the Mets organization. That is in the past.
“I don’t know what they gained from what they did to me. But I know what I gained. It made me a stronger person. Look, if you are a bad guy, you are a bad guy everywhere and the people in the game know it. The people who have played with me know that is not true.”
In fact, I was in Cardinal camp last week and the player manager Mike Matheny and general manager John Mozeliak described having in 2012-13 all but put the Saint in Louis.
Matheny said: “He was a special player and a special person. He made us a better organization. He is willing to help everyone on his team.”
Mozeliak added: “This is a true professional, a true gentleman. He has matured gracefully and has a great appreciation for winning. He desires to be part of a winning organization and being a key reason for success really drives him.”
Part of the Yankees homework that went into giving Beltran three years at $45 million, personnel head Billy Eppler said, was learning that “he is tremendous with younger players.” And, unsolicited, special spring coach Lee Mazzilli grabbed me to make this observation: “I work with the outfielders and tell them something and then he will take the young kids aside and explain why the drill is important so the kids really understand what we are doing.”
Beltran says that in his young days in Kansas City, veteran infielder Luis Alicea took the time to tutor him, and so he always felt it vital to pay it forward. So he does, whether it is a kid in an outfield drill or McCann after batting practice. He insists he did not come back to New York to fix his personnel record, but rather to chase a championship that has so far eluded him despite his brilliant postseason work.
Still, New York will get a second chance with Beltran to decide whether to believe perception or reality.