The first indication of the culture change infiltrating Citi Field were the tears in Wilmer Flores’ eyes. Yes, when it seemed Flores was minutes away from being shipped to Milwaukee last July, there were dozens of emotions jumbling his heart, but this was the one that stayed with him most deeply:

He wanted to be here.

He wanted to be a Met.

Not long after that, Zack Wheeler reached out to Sandy Alderson, wanting the Mets general manager to know how badly he wanted to stick around, too. Now, look: Flores is a young player, and the Mets were all he knew. Wheeler was a wounded pitcher, on the mend from Tommy John surgery, watching what his rotation brethren were doing day after day.

Still, after so many years when it seemed players either viewed a season with the Mets as an endless march through purgatory or came here because they were out of options (or bribed with ridiculous offers) there was a pattern born:

Guys wanted to be here.

They wanted to be Mets.

And now comes the most stunning example of all. Look, Yoenis Cespedes did not exactly accept pauper’s wages in deciding to remain a Met for at least the next 10 months. He is set to earn a minimum of $75 million the next three years, and could well make this a one-year, $27.5 million pit stop on the way to an even more spectacular deal next year. He took no vow of poverty to retain his orange and blue vestments.

But make no mistake: Cespedes is here because he wanted to be here, because he liked what he saw during his electric three months in Flushing. If his market didn’t quite explode as he had wanted, he still had a guaranteed nine-figure deal awaiting him in Washington. There was still time to shake down the White Sox or the Angels.

Instead, he stays a Met and there is little doubt that is what he wanted the immediate end-game of this pursuit to yield. And that may be the most stunning thing of all. The Mets no longer are an organization built on a foundation of Kryptonite — and, to their credit, the men who sign the checks no longer get the bends at the prospect of etching a few extra zeroes onto those checks.

Alderson, meanwhile, maintains a hot streak that extends back to summer, when he turned over his roster on the fly and turned the Mets into the most watchable team in the National League for three solid months. He did this. The Wilpons did this. They insisted they wanted Cespedes back, but only on their terms.

And that’s how they got him.

A few years ago, after David Wright re-signed and committed the rest of his career to the Mets, I asked him, point blank, a simple question: Why?

“Because I love it here,” he said. “Because when things are going well, there’s no better place to have that kind of success. And because I believe the organization is committed to bringing us back to that place.”

At the time, you wondered if maybe Wright had gotten a brand-new turnip truck as part of his deal. It always was clear he wanted to be here. But his always seemed like a lonely voice in the wilderness, destined to echo in the silence of empty ballparks for years on end.

Then Flores pondered leaving what the Mets were building, and he started to cry. And Wheeler saw his name in the papers for reasons other than his recovery, and he pressed the buttons on his cell phone. Even Daniel Murphy, clearly, was hoping something would break for him here, seemed to wait a little bit longer to see if he could stay in the band.

Now Cespedes stays in the band. The Mets, hovering under a cloud of inferiority for so long, have emerged as a destination place. And why not? There’s all that pitching. There’s the NL pennant they’ll raise toward the sky at Citi Field on April 8. And now, there is Cespedes, who did the most incredible thing Friday night: He left a huge pile of money on the table in favor of a lesser pile of money.

He wanted to be a Met.

That’s not just a culture change. That’s a full-blown metamorphosis. Twenty-five days till pitchers and catchers. Who’s ready now?