MLB

An Amazin’ mix of hope and cynicism from Mets fans

PORT ST. LUCIE — Even here, even in February, even as a beautiful orange sun rules a pristine blue sky — Hey! Those are Mets colors! — it doesn’t take much to fire a cynical shot across a skeptical bow. In the late morning, a few dozen folks have ringed the practice field where Zack Wheeler throws live batting practice.

This is precisely the promise of spring: Kid with a big right arm, showing it off to the world. For Mets fans sold on the potential of 2014 and beyond, who are willing to endure whatever 2013 might bring, these are the moments to rally behind.

It is for such snapshots that Sally and Kevin Plantier have been planning their February getaways for years. Once, they were the Plantiers of Astoria, and the Mets were their neighborhood team. The past decade, they have built winter vacations around the drive from Virginia to Port St. Lucie. Once, they were almost swallowed by the crowds who joined them.

“I remember 2007, it was impossible to move around here it was so crowded,” Sally says. She is wearing a brand-new Mets batting practice cap, the one with Mr. Met smiling and sprinting on the front, and an orange No. 5 David Wright T-shirt. Her husband wears an FDNY cap and a wind-breaker.

“The next year, too,” Kevin says, shaking his head. “We really thought we had the best team around in those years.”

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The gatherings are more intimate now and, truthfully, they skew a little older. A lot of these fans have endured a lot of lean times. They laughed along with the ineptitude of the ’60s as kids, suffered along with the stripped-down joke of the ’70s as parents, winced as the blustery Mets of the ’80s became the also-rans of the ’90s as their nests emptied.

And bided their time across four long, miserable years while a lot of their grandkids have become Yankees fans.

It isn’t always easy keeping a stiff upper lip. Wheeler is sharp, whistling fastballs on corners and at knees, inspiring impressed nods from hitters who mostly watch those speedballs zip by, and at least one “Oooooh,” from Ike Davis, watching on the side, after an especially nasty breaking pitch tumbles off the table.

It is enough to intoxicate you …

“Oh boy,” Sally Plantier chirps, “this is exciting!”

… unless you choose not to be intoxicated by it.

“You know what he’s probably saying to himself?” Kevin Plantier says later, on the walk back to the parking lot. “I wouldn’t mind pitching to these guys in a real game.”

“Don’t ruin this for me,” Sally scolds, laughing, and her husband laughs too because skepticism isn’t his way.

“He still thinks every year can be 1969,” Sally says.

Wherever the Mets are headed, for this year, for the next few years, this is where it starts. This is ground zero, has to be, or else everything Sandy Alderson and his wise men have been building for has been constructed on weak and shifting sand. This is where it starts.

It may not be as much of an event as it was six years ago, that spring of ’07 when the Mets were defending NL East champs and looked primed to string pennants like Christmas lights, when there were stars everywhere, and expectations through the roof, and the kind of rock-star vibe commonplace on the Tampa side of the state for damn near 20 years.

Then it didn’t matter what back field the fans flocked to, there were platinum names everywhere. Now, the people dart their eyes from the numbers on players’ backs to the numbers on the roster sheets in their hands. Who is that wearing Beltran’s old number? Ah, it’s the kid, the catcher, d’Arnaud …”

Still … this is where it starts. A kid with a big arm shaving corners, fans eager to see, eager to dream. Most Mets fans haven’t even bothered playing the standard spring game of “If Wright is Wright … and the pitching staff is as good as it looks … and the bullpen isn’t awful … and Ike and Murph and Duda hit a little … and …”

They’re beyond those foolish fantasies, wiser than that. They hate being cynical. They want to believe, even if only the future warrants such faith. They want to walk away like Kevin Plantier did yesterday.

“The kid really does have an arm,” he said. “Doesn’t he?”

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com