Carlos Beltran approached the plate in the ninth inning Thursday to the familiar fanfare of David Y Abraham’s “El Esta Aqui” and a hearty ovation from about half of the 20,000 sweaty fans left in Citi Field.

Beltran fouled Mitchell Boggs’ first pitch back, and the crowd booed when a man with a glove in the first row of the second deck mishandled the ball and let it drop to the seats below.

He laid off Boggs’ next offering, a low fastball.

“Imagine he strikes out looking!” said someone in the press box.

Beltran lifted the next pitch to left field. Matt Holliday took a couple of steps back, then charged forward. The outfielder steadied himself under the ball, collected it, and retired Beltran.

As the best center fielder in Mets’ history jogged off the field, a few fans behind the dugout stood and applauded. He stepped down the stairs to the Mets bench and pulled off his batting gloves and helmet.

Ten minutes later, Terry Collins spoke to reporters in the Citi Field media room.

“I deal in reality,” he said. “I know it’s news, I know it’s talked about, I know it may happen…. Right now, he’s hitting third tomorrow in Miami.”

Reporters gathered around Beltran’s locker as one by one his teammates emerged from back rooms of the clubhouse and changed into Hawaiian shirts for the trip to Florida. They separated into small clutches and talked about old colleagues and dream jobs as they waited.

Finally Beltran appeared, in workout attire. The crowd broke to let him pass. He walked to his locker, looked into it briefly, then turned, paused, and began answering the same series of questions he answers every night.

“Honestly, I’m not thinking about that, man,” he said. “I’m focused on playing games.”

“I gave everything I have for this organization. I have no regrets.”

“All that we have here are rumors.”

Indeed. I’ll hold off on the requiems until the man is actually traded.

This isn’t exactly breaking news, but reader Mike emailed a while back to ask me to pass along a question to R.A. Dickey. He pointed out that talk of Dickey’s missing UCL and the story of a doctor noticing something amiss from a picture comes up pretty frequently, and asked if Dickey had the picture.

Anyway, I might have Googled it before I asked Dickey because it turns out this was covered when Dickey’s story blew up last year: The picture was the cover of Baseball America’s 1996 Olympic preview. But it’s always good to have an excuse to talk to R.A. Dickey about something, anyway, and he’s always obliging.

Unfortunately, I can’t find a bigger version online than this one, from the Times’ feature on the knuckleballer. If anyone has a back collection of Baseball America issues and a scanner and wants to provide a larger version, we could all get a better look at the angle of Dickey’s dangle. That’s our man second from left:

Something about Angel Pagan’s effort at “the claw” in the fifth last night made me sad. Pagan’s was not the emphatic windmill we’ve seen from Jose Reyes all year or Daniel Murphy’s clumsy but forceful air shot-put. It was a claw of attrition, one delivered entirely mechanically, devoid of enthusiasm. It did not shout, “we’re doing this!” but rather whimpered, “are we still doing this?”

I am not one to question a baseball player’s motivation. In this job, I have come to recognize that professional athletes are, in general, programmed a bit differently than most of us. They did not reach the absurd heights at which they compete by letting up easily, and so I find it hard to believe that a Major Leaguer is ever likely to stop trying his hardest at any point in a season. There are too many selfish reasons for all of them to keep succeeding to expect that any of them would stop wanting to. Fans are often way too quick to diagnose indifference in professional athletes, usually because the fans themselves have grown weary.

That is to say, don’t take the above mention of Pagan’s pathetic celebration as some sort of insinuation that the center fielder isn’t trying his hardest. I am certain he is.

But these guys aren’t stupid, and the Mets know their place in the standings and are aware of the trade rumors surrounding some members of the team.  So — and I’m definitely reading too much into this — to me Pagan’s perfunctory gesture felt like an indication that they know what we all kind of know: The fun times are coming to an end for the 2011 Mets. The Braves and Phillies are shrinking on the horizon. Carlos Beltran appears likely to be traded in the next couple of weeks.

It was as if Pagan opened the spotlight not for the Jose Reyes-headlined blockbuster of May and June but for a grim reality series, the third straight season of August and September games lacking the luster of playoff implications. Whatever longshot chance of a Wild Card chase that lingered through the early parts of the summer seems likely to leave town with Beltran.

It’s a shame, really. It was amazing watching what Reyes and Beltran could do when surrounded by halfway decent players, and if only David Wright were in the lineup all year, or they had managed to put together this deep a roster a couple seasons sooner, or Johan Santana… man. Man.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. All hope is not yet lost. Baseball Prospectus gives the Mets a 1.6 percent chance of making the playoffs. Wright returns soon. I’ll enjoy this while it lasts, and worry about the other stuff when it comes.