NEW YORK — Francisco Lindor still resides in a corner locker, nearest to the exit. His residence at Citi Field includes two rows of cleats, each pair brighter than the previous one: some orange, some yellow, some lilac and several shades of blue. For Friday’s game, which he ended with a walk-off single in the 10th inning to give the Mets a 10-9 victory, he opted for orange ones the hue of a blinding summer sun just before it disappears beneath the horizon.
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Next to his locker is a double-doored, caramel-colored cabinet filled with even more cleats, gloves and other gear, everything displaying a New Balance logo. He’s been the face of their baseball department since he had a corner locker in Cleveland.
Lindor chose forest green batting gloves and mint green shoes for batting practice on Friday afternoon. They aren’t his favorite pair of cleats; he prefers the lilac and gray ones because they’re simultaneously soft and loud and grab his attention.
Everything about Lindor is bright and colorful or, as his former manager, Terry Francona, described him, “bubbly.” He’s always been that way, since he was chasing his dad’s grounders at the bottom of a hill in Puerto Rico; since he was racing around his elementary school’s courtyard every morning; and since he strolled into the visitors’ clubhouse in Detroit on a Sunday morning in June 2015 with a designer suitcase and sunglasses ahead of his major-league debut. On Friday afternoon, he sported a rainbow-colored headband wrapped around his blonde-tinted curls.
He’s had days like this before, even in little ol’ Cleveland, days in which it seems as though the world gravitates toward him. He held court with a media contingent curious about his feelings toward facing his former club. When they dispersed, Eduardo Escobar sat at his adjacent locker, slapped hands with his infield mate and told him, “You’re looking good today!” Clubhouse attendants, broadcasters, reporters, teammates and others filtered through his space until he finally escaped to take his pregame hacks.
At one point, Tommy Hunter, a former Cleveland reliever who occupies a nearby locker, grabbed his glove, power-walked through the area and joked to an unsuspecting crowd, “Sorry, my availability is cut short today, but maybe tomorrow.”
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Not much has changed. Sure, Lindor has an Upper East Side address now and a second child on the way. He can wander through Central Park on the morning of a home game and sometimes go unnoticed. But he’s the same guy. He carried that big-market aura in Cleveland, the billboard-worthy smile, the outgoing personality, the polish in dealing with the media and sidestepping public drama.
The only changes have been the faces in the dugout. Only José Ramírez, Shane Bieber, Emmanuel Clase, James Karinchak, Cal Quantrill and Josh Naylor remain on Cleveland’s roster, and Lindor barely played with the last four. He knows and keeps in touch with more Cleveland coaches and clubhouse staffers than Cleveland players at this point. He said he follows the Guardians more than he does any other team.
“I do pay attention to how they’ve done and how they’re doing,” he said. “I want them to do good.”
Players move on. Rosters turn over. And, two years after Cleveland and New York executed a six-player swap, everyone involved in the deal tends to agree it was a necessary move for all parties.
“I’m happy where I’m at,” Lindor said. “I’m blessed to be here.”
In a bit of serendipity, in Lindor’s first two at-bats on Friday he hit a ball to the two players who replaced him in Cleveland’s middle infield, Amed Rosario and Andrés Giménez.
Giménez made his big-league debut for the Mets in 2020, during the pandemic-altered season. Because of social distancing and league health and safety protocols, he was stationed in the visitors’ clubhouse.
“Ironically, I think I was in the same locker,” he said.
That made the trek to the third-base side of Citi Field a little less strange.
For Rosario, who spent four seasons with the Mets after rising to the top of many prospect rankings, it was a return to where his “dream of being a baseball player came true.” He said he wasn’t sure how fans would greet him, but after a decent round of applause in the first inning, he smacked a first-pitch sinker up the middle for a single.
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For both Cleveland players, the trade opened doors to opportunities they didn’t think they would receive with the Mets. They’ve been the Guardians’ middle-infield tandem ever since.
“At the moment, I didn’t understand what was happening, in reality, in my career,” Giménez said. “But that trade was vital for my development and the opportunity they gave me to establish myself as an everyday player.”
When it included Carlos Carrasco in the trade, Cleveland, with its pitching factory constantly pumping out capable starters, offered a reminder that any veteran pitcher is on borrowed time on its roster. Carrasco was no exception, despite signing a pair of team-friendly contract extensions, enduring an emotional leukemia battle during the 2019 season, and becoming a regular visitor to the pediatric cancer ward at the Cleveland Clinic.
Before Friday’s game, Francona said of Carrasco: “I hope we beat his brains out tonight, but, I love the kid and I think there are a lot of people who feel that way in and around Cleveland because of the kind of kid he is, what he does for other people, what he’s gone through.”
Naylor greeted Carrasco, who still uses Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69” as his warmup song, with a three-run blast in the first inning. Carrasco said he peered into the Guardians’ dugout at the start of the game and saw Francona and other familiar coaches. He felt a surge of emotion rush to his chest and had to check himself to avoid disobeying the pitch clock.
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Baseball sticks a group of people in small quarters — a clubhouse, a dugout, a plane — for eight months a year and then, without warning, scatters them across the country through trades, waivers and free agency, only to reunite them, mostly in passing, for a few days every couple years. Lindor was a member of Cleveland’s organization for a decade before the trade; Carrasco for 12 years. The Mets were all Giménez and Rosario ever knew.
But sometimes change is beneficial. And so is reflecting on the journey.
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Guardians assistant hitting coach Victor Rodriguez emerged from the visitors’ dugout on Friday afternoon and scanned the field, in search of Lindor. He reminisced about Lindor’s home run in Puerto Rico in April 2018, seven months after Hurricane Maria, when much of the region was powerless and, as Rodriguez recalled, “the only electricity was at the ballpark, and he got all the fans going.”
He got his fans going again on Friday, this time against his old squad.
“A lot of good memories. They helped me grow,” Lindor said. “They helped shape me into the man I am today. There’s a lot of good things that happened over there, whether it was in the minor leagues or in the big leagues. I was blessed to come through the Cleveland organization.”
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(Top photo: Brad Penner / USA Today)