No sarcasm. Straight to the monkey.

Carlos Beltran hit two home runs last night to help the Cardinals beat the Nationals in the NLDS, because that’s one of the main things Beltran does. That power outburst, of course, inspired a lot of ironic Beltran-blaming from all corners of the Internet and this reasonable observation:

Patrick’s is a point I’ve made plenty of times before. July 11, 2011, for example:

No one really blames Carlos Beltran for anything anymore.

A joke that started as backlash to a pesky, ill-conceived idea forwarded in many corners of the fanbase and media has become a tired cliche, embraced now even by many of the same talking heads and columnists whose unsubstantiated insinuations prompted it in the first place.

And sure, a few stubborn fools maintain that Beltran is somehow at fault for all the Mets’ troubles, and in weak times we may turn to their blogs or Twitter feeds to see how their warped minds will twist his latest contributions to fit with their nonsensical narratives. But it is only a macabre appeal, like peeking through our hands at a train wreck. Anyone still blaming Carlos Beltran has long since careened off the rails.

Or later that month:

People who don’t appreciate Carlos Beltran by now don’t deserve to.

But then then there’s stuff like this, still appreciative of Beltran but apparently designed to tweak Mets fans:

And I am tweaked. Beltran had a .978 OPS in his only postseason with the Mets. Sure, that’s below the absurd standards he has set for himself as the greatest postseason hitter of all time, but it’s still well within the range, I’d say, of “completely awesome.” And Beltran hit THREE home runs in the series for which he is blamed. Beltran’s 115 career postseason plate appearances make for an inadequately small sample, for sure, but you know what else is a small sample? ONE AT-BAT. It was an incredible curveball! Adam Wainwright is awesome. Babe Ruth wouldn’t have hit that!

Deep breath. Inhale. Exhale.

Don’t indulge; just enjoy. Carlos Beltran is so completely totally awesome — in the postseason, in the regular season, in Spring Training, whenever. And if you know and I know he would have been similarly awesome in later postseasons with our New York Mets if they had ever again managed to put a legitimate postseason team around him, there’s no real reason to harp on it.