More Than A Big Stick

How long does it take to drive from San Juan to Aguadilla? Ninety minutes? Two hours tops? Carlos Delgado has driven that route countless times: 22 west to Arecibo and the 2 along the coast, then right on 107, past the Church's Fried Chickens and Burger Kings and Taco Makers to the little cul de sac with the three-bedroom, orange stucco home in which he grew up, sharing a room with his younger brother, Yasser. On a weekday morning, with no traffic, the guy should have gotten to Aguadilla by now.

Instead he is telling Delgado--again--that he is on the road, but the traffic... Dios m�o. That's the same story he told an hour ago. Delgado sighs, hangs upand says out loud, but more to himself, "He's coming, he's coming, he's coming. That's all he says."

This is a special day--actually, Delgado will tell you that all his days are special, but today, he explains, is "especially special." He is going to surprise his mother, Carmen, with a new car: a silver Acura SUV with a big red bow on top that she will not be able turn down because there it will be, on the road in front of her house. Carmen, a former medical technician, won't be able to look at it and say, "No, it's too big for me and Papi," as she did a few years ago when he offered her a new mansion a few miles from the modest house where she raised her family.

The dealer, who's driving the vehicle over from San Juan himself, says the roads are jammed, but who knows when he really set out? The important thing is that it's now late morning and the car has still not arrived. "I myself, I am always on time," says the New York Mets first baseman, a rare trait among professional athletes. If he says he will call you at 9 a.m. or pick you up at 9:30, then he will. If you miss his call or are late for a meeting, then he might not give you another chance. His life seems to be governed by simple rules, and he expects nothing more from those around him than he expects of himself.

Delgado shuts his cellphone, steps out of his pickup truck and climbs the stairs to the gym to begin his morning workout. The middle-aged women in various shades and styles of spandex in the Body Work fitness center carefully study him as he goes through his routines of pull-downs and chest presses on various machines, sipping from their water bottles as they comment to each other on what Carlos is doing today. Tomorrow, Carlos knows, they will be doing their own version of what he is doing now, for they have taken to imitating the fitness routine of Aguadilla's most famous resident, in the belief that what is good for a power-hitting first baseman must also be good for a fortysomething housewife. Judith, a woman in tan sweats and a white T-shirt, comes over to show him several yards of rubber tubing that she has acquired to emulate the resistance training that he was doing a few weeks ago. Delgado just smiles and nods.

Judith retreats to a mat where she proceeds to entangle herself in the tubing, looking hopefully toward Delgado, who smiles but stolidly continues working the cable crossover machine. He is gingerly rehabbing from Oct. 30 surgery to repair a torn tendon in his left arm. The Mets report to Port St. Lucie, Fla., for spring training in a few weeks.

Delgado is rare among modern sluggers in that he eschews extensive weight training in favor of light cardio and just a few off-season at bats. (He hasn't played winter ball in Puerto Rico since 1998.) "I'm not a gym rat," he says. "I do just enough so that I can perform for eight months. The working out, it's a little boring, but it's what everyone is into now." He says he does 25 off-season sessions of swinging the bat, either soft-toss or against a pitching machine, only because he hears that's what other guys are doing, "I wish I had the balls not to hit until February," he laughs. "You want to find your swing in March, so when the season starts, you're just getting the rhythm."

He feels that last season, his first as a Met, he never did quite find that rhythm. Still, despite a May-June slump, during which, he says, "I couldn't hit water if I was pushed out of a boat," Delgado finished with 38 home runs and 114 RBIs, helping to lead New York to 97 wins and a National League East title before turning in a monstrous postseason debut: a .351 batting average with four homers and 11 RBIs in 10 games against the Dodgers and the Cardinals. Batting cleanup, he has proved to be a steadying influence in a lineup that for the first time in 20 years has almost as much pop as the crosstown-rival Yankees'--and maybe more popularity. "He was everything and more," Mets manager Willie Randolph says of Delgado. "You know this guy is a great player, but he is also the most cerebral and thoughtful player I've ever been around. And he shares that knowledge to make his teammates better."

Delgado's career numbers--407 homers and 1,287 RBIs at age 34--have him on pace for Cooperstown. Yet his teammates say he provides more than just a big lefthanded bat that forces teams to pitch to switch-hitting centerfielder Carlos Beltran, whose offensive numbers with Delgado hitting behind him improved considerably from the previous season. Delgado has also proved to be the missing ingredient in the Mets' multicultural stew. "From the beginning, in Toronto," says Shawn Green, a longtime friend and current teammate who spent seven years with Delgado as a Blue Jay, "he was always really unique in that he pulls everyone's respect, the Latin players', the American players'. He's someone who will go out to dinner with anyone, no matter what race. A lot of teams don't have that unifying presence."

Beltran, who hails from Manat�, 50 miles east of Aguadilla, agrees: "No one doesn't listen to Carlos. When he's slumping, he doesn't let it show. He's still the same smart guy who will always help you."

Delgado takes a break from his workout, cracking open a bottle of water. His Under Armour T-shirt and shorts hang from him like tarps over a battleship--you can sense the muscle and menace beneath, but all you can see are gentle curves and expanses of fabric. He is large but so well-proportioned that you only notice his size when you are next to him. That is why, when viewed on television or from the stands, he doesn't seem as immense as some of his slugging peers, whose bulging chests and hypertrophic forearms make them seem like a different species. But up close Delgado seems a bona fide 6'3", 240 pounds, mostly because of the broad smile, his one feature that could belong to a much larger man. It starts slowly, a parting of lips to reveal blinding white teeth, and then radiates out from his mouth, through goatee and mustache, up past his nose and cheeks to the eyes and then even past the eyes to those muscles over the bridge of his nose and his forehead. The result is as unambiguous as one of these: (:.