PORT ST. LUCIE — Spring training 1992. Back field at Fort Lauderdale Stadium. New Yankees manager Buck Showalter and I are standing side by side staring out at an outfield drill that Mel Hall is purposely tarnishing.

Showalter never moves his eyes from the drill, never looks at me, but says: “Joel, you can have an a–hole on your team. But that a–hole better be Barry Bonds.”

Earlier this week. First Data Field. New Mets outfield coach Ruben Amaro is hitting fungos to nine outfielders. New manager Mickey Callaway is watching. One of the nine is wearing his hat backward. One is occasionally catching the ball behind his back. One — despite instruction to treat throw-ins as if runners were on base — occasionally delivers long, underhanded heaves toward Amaro. And before anyone mentions Yoenis Cespedes was nursing a sore shoulder, know that when he wanted, Cespedes displayed the best arm in the group.

Afterward, neither Amaro nor Callaway would refer to Cespedes as an a–hole. Quite the contrary. They praised the “energy” — both used that word — he has brought to drills. Both lauded Cespedes’ behavior to date. Both stated they don’t mind players spicing up the monotony of spring drills with individual flair, as long as the work is getting done.

Is this appeasement? Whether it is baseball or Hollywood, those in charge have a longer leash of tolerance for the extremely talented — and Cespedes is in the top few percentile on pure baseball skill.

Perhaps everything is personal perception. Midway through this particular drill, Cespedes lies on the ground, not rising until the ball is in flight. His personal add-on makes the drill more difficult and trains him to track the ball under more arduous circumstances. Soon several other outfielders are challenging themselves in this way, too. Again, perception. For in this moment you can decide Cespedes is no prima donna, but a leader by example. Unlike Hall, he is not disruptive, just distinctive — the question being, is individualism in these forums a positive, negative or neither?

“I have told him I like the way he is going about his business,” Amaro said.

I asked Jay Bruce — the drill’s most veteran outfielder and someone known for maximizing his skills with seriousness — his views of what Cespedes was doing and he said, “I have learned not everyone does things the same way.”

Bruce, though, offered a more valuable perspective. He said last year, when he was a Met and they were losing, that those associated with the team became attuned to finding reasons things went wrong. He got traded to the Indians and was part of a 22-game winning streak and noted no one cared about the little differences in, say, work habits. Winning and losing does much to determine viewpoints.

Cleveland manager Terry Francona is a likely Hall of Famer whose first champion was the 2004 Idiot Red Sox, who were filled with iconoclasts — and no one would confuse do-it-his-way Manny Ramirez, for example, as someone who cared what his teammates thought of his rule breaking.

But two managers I contacted (neither was Showalter) said they actually would have stopped the drill, with one saying he would have asked Cespedes to do the drills as instructed, and the other saying he would have pulled Cespedes to do the work separately, so as to not pollute others, especially potentially more easily influenced young players.

Is there a right or wrong answer?

Perhaps Showalter’s greatest resonance to the Yankees dynasty was helping to fumigate the clubhouse of non-team-oriented players while creating a professional environment that he handed to the non-confrontational Joe Torre.

Callaway gets no such benefits in a handoff from Terry Collins. The starting pitchers often operate like the cool clique in high school. Callaway’s advantage is that he is a pitching guy, someone who may have instant credibility with the group and, certainly, someone with firm beliefs about how pitchers should operate.

That is why Cespedes projects as the greater challenge. And to be around the Mets is to get the feeling that he believes the team works for him and not the other way around. For example, after a game Monday, two Mets media relations officials said they could get any player for reporters. Pause. “Except Cespedes.” I requested him anyway, and he was not even asked.

These are the eggshells the organization walks on around not just him, but also, I sense, Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard and even Tim Tebow. In Yankees camp, as a comparison, reporters ask Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton directly if they have a few minutes. With Tebow, there is a procedure to go through and maybe you get him.

Again, it is impossible to parse how much — if anything — this has to do with winning or losing. Though I will always believe accountability is a vital part of team culture.

With Cespedes, the Mets knew who he was upon making him the highest-paid, per-annum outfielder in history. The time to change him — or move on from him — has probably come and gone.

So the Mets will hope for a redux of 2015, when Cespedes played a lot more like Bonds than Hall, which helped fuel the team winning, which tends to make questionable actions be viewed as more eclectic than detrimental.