Carlos Beltran may have the prettiest left-handed swing in all of baseball.

Most hitters, under close scrutiny, can be seen to trace a loop, hitch, stutter, or twist somewhere between the point where they have committed to swing the bat and the point where they transfer all the force of that swing to their wrists. Beltran does no such thing and wastes little motion. His swing moves gracefully from point to point in straight lines, wherever it meets the ball, low or high. When he is hitting well, it meets the ball squarely — his hands following his hips and his left leg bracing him as he follows through, whipping the bat against the small of his back. It is elegant, complete, and seemingly effortless.

None of this could be said of Alex Rodriguez’s swing, which is complicated and mechanical. These days it incorporates a leg kick, which hitters use to time the pitcher and remind themselves to keep their hands back. Between that and the awkward weightlessness of his lead foot at the point of contact, his big windmill of a follow-through, and his sheer size, which presents him as a collection of odd angles when in motion, Rodriguez often looks more like a piece of windup machinery than an athlete.

I can’t discern character from a batter’s swing, but it’s interesting how the way these two men hit mirrors the way most fans perceive them. Beltran’s swing is mysterious, tight, nearly withdrawn. It’s so circumscribed that he could probably complete it in a barrel, and it seems a perfect extension of his body, something natural, a gift. Rodriguez’s is labored — the clear result of analysis and experimentation. One swing is preternaturally smooth, the other an outcome of mechanical processes. I have to wonder: Would baseball fans think differently of the two men if they exchanged swings? Beltran, after all, is the player who once credited some of his hitting to his practice of reading numbers written on tennis balls launched at his head at 120 miles per hour, whereas Rodriguez hit .358 in the major leagues when he was 20 years old. The idea that the first of these players has transcended craft and form, while the other is an ongoing experiment, seems somewhat specious.

The comparison between the two is more intriguing when you consider what they’ve done, both this year and since coming to New York. Rodriguez, rightly, has the attention of everyone who pays attention to baseball, because he’s hitting as well as anyone’s ever hit. There’s the gaudy trivia (three weeks into the season, he’s hit a home run in more games than he hasn’t), but also the immensity of his clutch hitting. A walk-off grand slam, a walk-off three-run home run, two home runs in one game against Curt Schilling in Fenway, a leadoff double in a tied game in Fenway — the scale of the heroics is so outlandish that it almost has a vengeful quality, as if the man who was accused by his own teammates last year of not having the heart to hit when it counts had decided to simply impose his will on the game and silence all the little ants without a hundredth of his talent, dedication, and knowledge.

Across town, Beltran hasn’t quite been doing what Rodriguez has done, but he’s been volcanic in his own right. Yesterday’s hitless game broke a week-long stretch in which Beltran’s perfect swing was working perfectly; he racked up multiple hits in five of six games and, with Jose Reyes, keyed one of those stretches the Mets periodically enjoy where they seem like college men playing with schoolchildren. Over three days, the Mets outscored their opponents 28–6, and then Beltran got hot, going 9-for-14 as the Mets won two of three and, even in losing a set to the Braves, established that they are more capable of sheer dominance than any other team in the league.

The difference in the reaction to the two, though, has been even bigger than the difference in their hitting. Beltran is acknowledged as a great player on a great team in the midst of a great run; Rodriguez’s hitting has caused a fundamental reevaluation of his character and place in New York baseball. Perhaps, all his critics are now conceding, it has been insane and ridiculous all along to act as if he’s been failing miserably, when at his worst he’s as good as any other player in town. His clutch hitting even seems to have earned him the mantle of a True Yankee.

One wonders how this happens. Beltran and Rodriguez, after all, have essentially the same story. Both came to New York, played below their own established standards, were treated skeptically, and then played MVP-caliber baseball for playoff teams in their second seasons in the city. Rodriguez, of course, won the MVP award in a season in which he singlehandedly kept a team whose pitching staff imploded in the pennant race. But that didn’t seem to matter. Beltran’s second season, even ending with him staring at the last pitch the Mets would see all October, saw him accepted; Rodriguez has had to hit about as well as it is humanly possible to hit for people to even start to acknowledge that he’s the best player on his own team and not, in fact, the most fragile and weakest man in a city of neurotics.

I’d like to think that all of this has to do with the differences in expectations that meet a great player in his prime and one of the 15 or so best players of all time in his prime, or with the differences between Mets and Yankees fans, but I suspect that it really has to do with those swings and, more generally, the way Beltran and Rodriguez carry themselves. It is ridiculous in its way — how does a windmill follow-through make someone less of a man? — but then it makes perfect sense. What an athlete does on the field and how he does it are all completely inseparable, and Beltran — like Reyes, Derek Jeter, and David Wright — has the good fortune of grace, while Rodriguez has the bad fortune of making it seem very difficult to be just about as good as anyone who’s ever played professional baseball. I’ll bet that with all his gifts, Rodriguez could work up a prettier, tighter, and more fluid swing — one that might influence people to think better of him. He wouldn’t be quite as good, perhaps, but he would be spared the sight of people who have questioned his manhood and integrity based on his inability to singlehandedly win a pennant fawning over him. Would he trade off a bit of excellence to be confronted with less shamelessness? Probably not. The man has high standards. It’s part of why he’s so great.
tmarchman@nysun.com