Baseball players have certain obligations. They are required to render skilled services to their employers, do so diligently and faithfully, keep themselves in first-class physical condition, obey club training rules, participate in reasonable promotional activities for their team and for Major League Baseball, and comply with all club requirements respecting conduct and service, on or off the field.

By signing a contract, a player pledges “to conform to high standards of personal conduct, fair play, and good sportsmanship.”

The American public, including that part of it that roots for the Mets, is bound by no reciprocal pledges to any players, and is under no obligation to observe any standard of conduct toward players that can’t be printed on the back of a ticket. But that doesn’t make it any less wrong to boo a player such as Johan Santana, who plays hard and well, keeps himself in shape, and behaves like a decent human being, and so does everything anyone has any right to ask of him. That any of this is even at issue, two weeks into the season, is pathetic. That the three-game series beginning tonight at Shea Stadium against the Washington Nationals actually offers the listless Mets a badly needed respite in the schedule and a chance to gain their bearings is more so. The weakness of Washington’s starting rotation is a good thing because it offers three entire games in which boorish fans will refrain from booing players who don’t deserve it. But why should the strength of the opposition matter to a team as good as the Mets?

As to the actual games, they should, not counting the glorious return of the unjustly exiled Lastings Milledge to Queens, be fairly straightforward affairs. While the Mets have a relative weakness against left-handed pitching, Carlos Delgado and Ryan Church being especially weak, none of the three starters Washington will roll out are at all intimidating. Nominal ace Odalis Perez couldn’t hack it in Kansas City — think about that — and signed on a minor league deal this year; Matt Chico, 24, and John Lannan, 23, are crafty left-handed apprentices who haven’t yet mastered the black arts of ball-scuffing and spitballing. Even the team that managed to ground into double plays in five straight innings Sunday should be able to take two of three from this crew.

The crowds, though, will be a story. When Santana was jeered off the field Saturday after giving up three home runs, it wasn’t in itself anything extraordinary; Mets fans have long prided themselves on trying to break the wills of their pricey new stars. Mike Piazza was treated so viciously during his first summer with the Mets that there was serious concern among the faithful that he would refuse to resign with the team after the season. Carlos Beltran has been treated like Gregg Jefferies for such offenses as playing through leg injuries that should have had him on the disabled list, and going 0–7.

It was the very boorishness of the whole spectacle that keeps it relevant four days later, though, and that should genuinely scare Mets fans. The drunkest lout in all of Flushing would doubtless acknowledge that Santana certainly hasn’t done anything to deserve a single catcall, just as what was certainly the drunkest lout on the East Coast a decade ago freely acknowledged to me that he was taunting Piazza essentially to make a man out of him, and not because he was in a batting slump. But an outpouring of even feigned anger toward a pitcher who, his significant talents aside, is basically a living “I’m sorry” present from team management to enraged fans can only be taken as a sign that the mood of the fans is edging near full-fledged disgust. Usually this sort of thing doesn’t matter; the diligence and faith mentioned in baseball contracts extend to an expectation that players will do their best regardless of how fans at the home park behave, and they nearly always do. Members of baseball management, though, have no such clauses in their contracts, and those employed by the Mets in fact have a long history of overreaction to displays of fan apoplexy. (Note which jersey L-Millz is wearing tonight if you don’t believe this is true.) Manager Willie Randolph, perhaps more importantly, has proved, if he has proved anything during his tenure in Queens, that the greater the pressure gets, the worse he runs a game.

One hates to think what he’ll do if the Mets’ hitters somehow don’t manage to lay a hurting on Washington’s troika of soft-tossing lefties this week and do manage to incur the wrath of the American public again, especially when one notes that the next stop on the schedule is Philadelphia.

tmarchman@nysun.com