Some fun, if meaningless, stuff coming out of the waning days of the Mets’ season: Chase Utley slid in hard and late on Ruben Tejada on Friday, trying to break up a double play, and several Mets took exception — most notably Carlos Beltran. Then the Mets, powered in part by Beltran, went on to take the next two from the Phillies, scoring a rare road series win and preventing the Phillies from celebrating their inevitable playoff berth in their own clubhouse.

The Mets downplayed the importance of that accomplishment, as they damn well should have, saying they were just happy to be playing good baseball and they should have been playing like this all year. And good. Something always feels messed-up when you hear about a team “relishing the opportunity to play spoiler.” Oh, you do? Why don’t you relish the opportunity to play better baseball for the first 140 games of the season?

Anyway, the whole thing sets up the lamest bit of post hoc ergo propter hoc talk-radio nonsense since “Lastings Milledge woke up the Marlins.” Someone somewhere will suggest — probably already has suggested — that Utley’s slide shook Beltran to life and made him decide, “oh, I guess I’ll start being awesome at baseball again,” even though, as we know, Beltran had been hitting like Beltran for weeks.

The whole affair brings Beltran back into the fore for the first time since the Walter Reed flap. Both the Post and Daily News put Beltran in the focus of their game stories for Sunday, with the Post asserting that he’ll likely be back in 2011 and the News suggesting he’s as good as gone.

It’s going to be one of those offseasons, I suppose. Which is pretty much every offseason. Until we get there, though, we might as well relish this opportunity to watch Carlos Beltran do stuff, knowing that it might be our last to watch him do it in a Mets uniform.