On Friday afternoon in the batting cages at the Mets’ Minor League facility in Port St. Lucie, Fla., Tim Teufel pitches to a righty-hitting college-aged kid in blue mesh shorts and a t-shirt.

A clutch of guys in Mets jerseys looks on, but none among them can peg down the identity of the kid. They know his name is Mike and that he’s not among their ranks at Fantasy Camp. They think the kid knows Teufel. One says he’s Teufel’s son. Another suggests he’s Teufel’s son-in-law. A third says he’s Teufel’s son’s friend. No one is certain.

But they see that he is awesome. He lashes line drive after line drive, every ball darting off his bat toward left-center field, slicing into the cage’s net and pulling it taut against its supports, then ricocheting back near where Teufel is throwing.

His contact produces a Major League sound. It is something different than the clichéd “crack of the bat.” That familiar sound, at stadiums, is filtered by distance and crowd rumble, limiting the spectrum of noise that hits the eardrum.

Here, up close, you can hear the sizzle and whoosh as the kid’s hands and bat and the ball all speed into the zone at the same time, then an oaky baritone report when they all come together. Thwock, thwock, thwock. It is magnificent.

“You know what’s wrong with this kid’s swing?” one camper asks another.

“What?”

“Nothin’.”

Only Lenny Harris sees something amiss. The familiar pinch-hitter extraordinaire, fresh off his own BP session in the next cage over, stops Teufel and jumps in the cage. The kid, he says, is cheating forward with his lower half before he swings, costing him balance — presumably passable in batting practice but the type of thing good pitchers will eventually exploit.

“You see it, Teuf?” Harris asks. Teufel nods and steps over to the batter’s box. He explains the importance of keeping flexible through the hips, swiveling his own as he does so. A few of the Fantasy Camp group chuckle; they have enjoyed a brief, exaggerated version of the Teufel Shuffle.

Harris pulls over a tee to teach the kid — and Teufel — a drill to help hitters stay back in the box. The kid hits more line drives toward left-center, shots that look and sound a lot like the earlier ones. Harris, a Minor League hitting coach these days, can see the adjustment, and he seems satisfied.

In the next cage over, one of the camp-goers takes his cuts off Pete Schourek. Long and lean and probably in his early 30s — one of the youngest in attendance — his swing appears steady, if lacking power. But he is missing the ball, swinging over it. The few he connects with veer straight down into the artificial turf.

Jim McAndrew walks into the area from one of the back fields. He watches the hitter struggling, then speaks up.

“Put your bat on your shoulder,” he says.

The guy looks confused, and a bit tentative. Little League coaches everywhere earn their pay reminding hitters to take the bat off their shoulder. Now, a member of the 1969 Mets — a pitcher, no less — is telling him otherwise. He pulls his hands in uncomfortably close to his body, elbows bent so tight his forearms almost graze his biceps, then swings and misses again.

“No, no. Just place the bat on your shoulder. Relax,” McAndrew says. The guy heeds his advice. Line drive.

The people at Mets Fantasy Camp are dentists and lawyers and doctors and teachers in real life. They range in age from about 30 to 70. Most of them are men, but there are a few women peppered throughout. Most come alone, but there are some kids and wives and parents milling about. They have in common only a love of baseball and a learned understanding that Major League Baseball players are really, really, really good at it.

The former players, too, seem to delight in the sport as much as the campers do, and the place becomes like a weeklong mid-Winter celebration of its grandeur. It’s January, and you’ve missed baseball. Here, you watch baseball, you play baseball, you talk baseball, you revere it.

“After October, you just kind of sit around,” says Al Jackson, a veteran of some 50 years in various positions in professional baseball. “This gets you ready for Spring Training. It breaks up the monotony.”