LOS ANGELES – Squinting against the mid-afternoon sun and warmed by a winning streak, the manager of the New York Mets admitted, yes, it was all true.





After most of a lifetime resisting the imperfections of the game, its players, its bounces and its injustices, he has mostly, if not entirely – OK sometimes – ceded to its whims.

Terry Collins is 63. A man does not surrender at 63, at least not a man such as Collins. But he does perhaps begin to recognize there are forces bigger than himself, and that sometimes he must run with the wind rather than against it, if only to turn and fight another day.

See – and this notion didn't come easy for Collins – the game is almost always greater than the man. It sucks and it's not fair. And when a man fights every day, every day, then that becomes the job – to fight. Sometimes the fight is just and sometimes it is blind, and because Collins didn't discriminate, the fight showed up every day, more game than even he was.

He recalled the frustration of watching the same player making the same mistake for what seemed like the thousandth time. Exhausted and livid, Collins turned to Del Crandall, the wise old coach, and asked, somewhat rhetorically, "How many times do I have to tell this guy?"

Without raising an eyebrow, Crandall said, "One more."

It is the essence of coaching.

"It was the best piece of advice I ever got," Collins said. "You know, you can't expect everyone to have the same passion."

[Also: Les Carpenter: Bryce Harper isn't an All-Star, and Davey Johnson is pleased]

Some 20 months ago, the Mets hired Collins. They were lost again, seeking stability, seeking fight. He was the guy who wouldn't discriminate. Set 'em up, he'd knock 'em down, one injustice at a time.

Except maybe no one expected Collins to have made peace with the game that taunted him all these decades, that left him as an overachieving minor leaguer as a player and as an enduring runner-up as a big-league manager. Maybe not peace, exactly, but an understanding. Maybe he spends a few summers coaching in the minor leagues, remembering when the game was imprecise, but also pure and promising. He turns his back to the wind and it carries him a little, just every once in a while, and he's better for it, and so are the young players he guides.

The job in New York looked impossible. It was a career killer. The Mets were half-broken in spirit and flat broke on the bottom line. So Met apathy would collide with Collins fury and there'd be casualties, starting with Collins. But that would be fine, because the organization would be better for it, and Collins would take it like a man, because he always did.

Except, instead, they grew on each other. Collins had changed, and maybe the Mets had something to do with that. The Mets had changed, and maybe Collins had something to do with that.

Halfway through their second season together, the Mets are relevant. More so, the Mets are dangerous. This is due in large part to David Wright and Johan Santana being, respectively, David Wright and Johan Santana again, and because R.A. Dickey has become, for the moment, a voodoo-pitched Tom Seaver.

Also because Collins is on the top step.

Two-hundred-forty-five games into his third big-league manager's job (his fourth counting the Orix Buffaloes of Japan's Pacific League), and his first in New York City, Collins was by now to have been exposed as too jumpy, too tightly wrapped. He was to have taken it all too personal. Instead, it seems, he has, well, mellowed. He understands. He loves. He cries. He celebrates without a dark fear that personal happiness and satisfaction will only further aggravate the game.

Story continues