Good to have friends in high places, especially at the Mets spring training camp

It’s only a few hundred feet from the big league compound to the minor league practice diamonds at New York Mets spring training camp in Port St. Lucie, Florida. It seems a much longer distance when you are there.

From Willie Mays Drive — yes, “The Say Hey Kid” has an access road named for him at Mets spring training, though he batted only .267 and .211 for them in the dusk of his fabulous career — you can see inside Tradition Field through manicured palm trees.

This is where the Mets play spring ball. They mostly leave the big gate in left field open so golf carts and bigger utility carts that drag the infield can get in and out.

At first blush, Tradition Field looks like a nice ballpark. It’s most remarkable features are awnings with wide blue and white stripes and a giant slanted slab on top of the grandstand that shields baseball fans from the elements.

There are myriad elements on the Atlantic coast of Florida that can wreak havoc with a spring baseball game, and with summer baseball games when the St. Lucie Mets of the Florida State League move into Tradition Field. The three biggest ones: sun, rain, mosquitoes. The slanted slab on top of the grandstand does not protect spectators from mosquitoes. Nothing does. Not even a Bartolo Colon-sized can of Off insect repellent.

One of the workers tells me they also used to have a problem with bats at Tradition Field. Not Louisville Sluggers and Mizunos and whatnot, but the type that fly around during night games. They mostly took care of it by building a bat sanctuary beyond the grassy berm in right field.

So Tradition Field looks both comfortable and serviceable, though it holds only 7,160 spectators, which is a few thousand fewer than what Cashman Field holds on Fireworks Night.

Tradition Field opened in 1988, only a few years after Cashman Field opened. It cost only $11 million to build (improvements since have run into the multimillions). If you’re scoring at home, Tradition Field was built with both public and private money, but mostly with private.

It is around 9:30 a.m. when I arrive at Mets spring training camp. One already can feel the humidity.

When I approach the open gate in left field at Tradition Field to take a look inside, a security guard says don’t even think about it. He asks who I am with.

I tell him the newspaper in Las Vegas. I would have been better off to say I was Matt Harvey’s personal valet. The security guard says without a badge, I can get no closer to Tradition Field than that cutout of Mr. Met over there where kids have their picture taken, though the Mets won’t be playing the Washington Nationals minus Bryce Harper (and probably a few other guys) until 6:10 p.m.

And I don’t have a stinkin’ badge, because when I reached out to the Mets P.R. department three times, they didn’t say anything about no stinkin’ badges.

The security guard shoos me back toward Willie Mays Drive with a haughty wave of the hand. He has a walkie-talkie; I’m thinking he might say something into it and have me removed for trespassing. But he cuts me a small slice of Grapefruit League slack.

So when I come upon Wally Backman at one of the back diamonds at the minor league complex, he’s leaning on a fence post or a fungo bat or both. This might be because it’s now a little past 10 a.m., and Backman, who is starting his fourth season as 51s skipper, had arrived at the ballpark around 6:30.

The Mets are like the U.S. Army — they do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day. At least on the minor league side. They were telling me that Yoenis Cespedes rolls into the parking lot in a different luxury car — or on the back of a horse — every day, but he doesn’t roll in at 6:30 a.m. Not a chance.

Anyway, the Mets’ prepubescent director of minor league operations hasn’t yet told Backman which of the high jersey numbers will be 51s when the Mets break camp. But Backman has a pretty good idea of who they will be, because Waldo, as 51s president Don Logan calls him, is an astute baseball man.

“Cecchini … Nimmo … Herrera …”

Backman invokes the names of Gavin Cecchini, Brandon Nimmo and Dilson Herrera, when I ask about three guys with whom 51s fans are going to fall in love, provided the Mets don’t call them up when one of the big leaguers pulls a hamstring.

Backman adds a fourth guy to watch for, because with Waldo, one always gets a little more than one asked for.

“Smoker — this !@#$% kid can throw up to 98 mph …”

I ask Backman if I might get a word with Smoker, a former first-round draft choice of the Nationals who was pitching for the independent Rockford Aviators a couple of years ago when one Backman’s buddies from the Frontier League rediscovered him.

Smoker seems a great story, I say, and Waldo agrees, but I tell him I don’t have a stinkin’ badge. Waldo says no !@#$% worries, just see Frank.

Frank is Frank Viola, the 51s pitching coach who was 24-7 one season and won the Cy Young Award for the Twins and like Backman, is the nicest of guys before and after a game. So though I am not wearing a stinkin’ badge, Viola whistles and yells to Josh Smoker that a reporter from the Las Vegas newspaper would like to talk to him when he has a minute.

Not more than 30 seconds later, Josh Smoker comes trotting down to the right-field foul pole, where I am standing and sweating not far from the intersection of Willie Mays Drive and Gil Hodges Avenue (or perhaps it was Casey Stengel Way) because I am the only one besides the players not wearing shorts and a floppy hat.

And we chat for about 20 minutes, and unlike the guys wearing the low jersey numbers in the spacious air-conditioned clubhouse at Tradition Field, Smoker smiles the whole time, as if he is enjoying himself, though the sun is beating down on us and the humidity is going up.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski