flits around the New York Mets’ clubhouse, stopping at the lockers of green rookies and grizzled veterans, players from the United States and Venezuela and Japan and Cuba and the Dominican Republic. It’s his ritual now, one performed out of equal parts desire and duty.
“I look forward to it every day,” Mets left-hander Sean Manaea said. “The consistency, the positivity — he really is like that every day.”
He does it after the game, too, regardless of the circumstances, and whether it’s with a pat on the back, a dap, a joke, a compliment, a wisecrack, a question or an embrace, Lindor seemingly manages the impossible: marrying extreme levels of wholesomeness with a sincerity that keeps it from growing cheesy. Earlier this month, after the Seattle Mariners held the Mets to one run in a three-game sweep, Lindor “is just walking around and saying: turn the page, enjoy the flight, enjoy your families, we’ll get ’em Tuesday,” said Mets reliever Adam Ottavino. “He is just hugging everybody, slapping five with everybody, making sure that we’re all together. Because that’s exactly who he is.”
To those unfamiliar with the rhythms of a baseball season, Lindor’s dismissal of a bad series could suggest a lack of care or urgency. In reality, the opposite is true. Lindor is the metronome. Now 30 years old and in his 10th major league season, he is acutely attuned to what the Mets’ clubhouse needs at any given moment — and, in fact, those inside it give him credit for launching the team back into playoff contention after a hellacious tailspin earlier this year.
