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.

Yesterday the names Domonic Brown and Mike Minor surfaced in trade rumors as possible returns for the remaining two (probably awesome) months of Carlos Beltran’s season, and Mets fans, for the most part, salivated. Brown, a 23-year-old Phillies outfielder, entered the season ranked fourth overall on Baseball America‘s annual Top 100 prospects list. Minor, a 23-year-old lefty starter for the Braves, came in at 37 on the same list, and the particular rumor mentioning his name said the deal would include another prospect.

If those potential hauls sound a little rich for Beltran, it’s because, I suspect, they are. Looking back over recent deadline deals for pure rentals — pending free agents — there aren’t a ton of examples of top 50 prospects being moved.

Granted, teams value prospects based on their own scouting and not on Baseball America’s list. That’s just a decent general guideline to gauge a young player’s reputation around the game. Plus, there have been a handful of big prospects moved at or before the deadline: Justin Smoak, ranked 13th heading into last season, was dealt in the Cliff Lee trade; Brett Wallace (40) was dealt in a package for Matt Holliday in 2009; in 2008, Matt LaPorta (23) was traded by the Brewers to land CC Sabathia and Andy LaRoche (31) helped the Dodgers add Manny Ramirez in a three-way deal.

Obviously every season’s trade market is its own unique snowflake, and if Beltran is the best available hitter this year perhaps Sandy Alderson can get enough teams in the bidding to drive the outfielder’s price tag up. But since Beltran comes with a pretty hefty injury risk and will not bring back draft picks to his acquiring team, it seems unlikely he’ll command the type of haul that Lee, Holliday, Sabathia or Manny did.

We can certainly hope that he does, and it only takes one desperate GM to offer Grady Sizemore, Brandon Phillips and Cliff Lee (and footnote Lee Stevens) for Bartolo Colon. But you’ll have to put me down for pleasantly surprised if the Mets wind up with a prospect of Brown’s caliber or a package including Minor in a deal. Trade-rumor guys traffic in information gleaned from conversations with front-office types, and if I had to guess — and excuse me for conspiracy theorizing — I’d say any talk of a return that heavy for Beltran is coming out of Flushing.

Thanks to @AMirch729 for Twitter help on this one.

Also, it’s worth noting that the Dodgers traded Carlos Santana for Casey Blake in the 2008 season, while Santana was in the midst of a breakout year in High A ball. Santana was not on the Top 100 prospects list before that season, but was ranked 26th the following year. Insert “Evil Ways” joke here.

Wait, that Domonic Brown? The 23-year-old outfielder who was ranked the fourth-best prospect in baseball by Baseball America coming into the season?

I mean, it would absolutely destroy me to see Beltran play out the next couple of months with the Phillies. And I approach all trade-deadline speculation with tons of skepticism, as you probably know. But I had no idea we were talking about that caliber prospect.

Because if you’re dealing Beltran for Brown, not only are you trading two months of Beltran’s awesomeness for several years of a highly touted, Major League-ready young outfielder that could blossom into a star, but you’re taking from the Phillies one of their few players on the short side of 30.

Doesn’t smell like something the Phillies would do. Seems like a no-brainer from the Mets’ standpoint, no matter how much it helps their rivals this season.