Two faces of a franchise are broken.
Mike Cameron, the life of the Mets' clubhouse, had surgery Friday night to repair multiple facial fractures. Carlos Beltran, the future of the Mets' organization, has a less severe facial fracture. They each had a concussion and spent the day at Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California.
The rest of the Mets began a three-game series at Dodger Stadium in an attempt to start rehabilitating their season.
In the hours after Cameron and Beltran collided Thursday in San Diego, the Mets tried to tell themselves that they were lucky. Their fallen teammates were talking and neither was paralyzed. But by Friday afternoon, the Mets did not feel so fortunate.
Cameron and Beltran, two of the Mets' best and most influential players, are out indefinitely, and the organization has no one of similar caliber to replace them. Beltran does not need surgery and went to the team hotel in Los Angeles on Friday night, but the Mets were deciding whether to place him on the disabled list. Cameron told manager Willie Randolph and left fielder Cliff Floyd that he would play again this season. Doctors, however, are reserving judgment and will keep him in Southern California for at least a week.
"He said his face felt like it broke apart," said Floyd, who spoke on the telephone with Cameron for about 20 minutes Thursday night. "I know he's looking forward to getting his face right because he's a pretty boy."
Floyd added, "We're in California, so you know they've got the best plastic surgeons here."
The Mets are among several teams flirting with a pennant race. They are one winning streak from contention, one misstep from a long fall. They had suffered relatively few bad breaks this season before sustaining this most severe blow. The Mets may look back on Thursday's head-to-head collision as the moment their 2005 season crumbled. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to pick themselves up from the grass in right-center field at Petco Park.
In a sense, Randolph's managerial career starts now. The Mets, already an emotional group, were visibly shaken to see Cameron being carted off the field on a stretcher and Beltran hobbling off with a trainer. Cameron, one of the most outgoing players in baseball, could barely speak; Beltran, one of the most graceful players in the game, could not stand up without falling back down. How the Mets fare from here will be viewed through that prism.
"I'll give the guys a brief update and we'll go out and play," Randolph said. "I feel in my heart we'll be OK."
Randolph must convince the Mets that baseball still matters and that they are still contenders. He must also piece together a starting outfield from a pool of reserves. He can put Gerald Williams in center and Victor Diaz in right, or Chris Woodward in center and Marlon Anderson in right. Never mind that Woodward and Anderson are natural infielders, that Williams is 39 years old and Diaz is 23.
Jim Duquette, the Mets' senior vice president for baseball operations, suggested that the club might try to acquire reinforcements from outside the organization.
Diaz, called up from Class AAA Norfolk on Thursday, proved in the first month of the season that he was capable of playing right field adequately and producing at the plate. The Mets might be able to compensate for Cameron or Beltran, but probably not for both.
Cameron and Beltran are not only starting outfielders who hit in the meat of their order and make a combined US$25 million a year, but they are also among those rare players who have speed, power, agility and a positive clubhouse manner.
They complement each other with their personalities and their games. Beltran is a quiet mentor for young players, while Cameron is a vivacious leader, loosening the Mets with a song or a joke whenever they most need it.
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