Lennon: Soldiers at Walter Reed deserved better

The Mets have stumbled through some embarrassing moments this season. But they reached a new low this week in the wake of a team-organized trip to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

That's right. Think about that for a second. The Mets transformed something as positive as an afternoon visit with wounded soldiers into a controversial standoff between the team and the three players who did not attend the event - Carlos Beltran, Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez.

Given the trio involved, it's not surprising that this became the mess that it did. Castillo and Perez have felt alienated for a while now, and Beltran to a lesser degree after his public scuffle with the Wilpons over his January knee surgery.

It's also understandable that the Wilpons were furious at these three players for their actions. The team's chief operating officer, Jeff Wilpon, traveled to D.C. specifically for the Walter Reed visit, and his presence served to emphasize the importance of the annual event. The Mets also had a clubhouse meeting the previous day to urge everyone to attend.

The message obviously got through. The Mets had an unprecedented turnout - 29 of the 33 players on the roster made the trip, with that night's starting pitcher, Dillon Gee, the only one who was told not to go. The team had so many players show up, in fact, that the chartered bus was not big enough and the overflow had to drive to the hospital.

But instead of the focus being on the large Mets contingent - the highest attendance for any of the team's charitable endeavors - anger was directed at Beltran, Castillo and Perez, from the higher levels of the organization to some corners of the clubhouse.

That's as much the fault of the Mets as those three players, who were cornered by reporters the following day and grilled about their decisions to skip the hospital visit.

Beltran explained that he had a meeting that morning for the baseball academy he is building in Puerto Rico, but privately, he was fuming about being called out on his decision.

The other two didn't provide much of an explanation. Castillo suggested he was uncomfortable with the idea and said, "Sometimes when you see people with no legs, no arms, [from] when they fight, and to also be in the hospital like that, I don't like to see that."

Perez declined to discuss it, and really, he didn't have to. As manager Jerry Manuel said, in trying to put the matter in perspective, "That's an individual thing." Which is why the Mets, at least officially, told the players that attendance was not mandatory.

Even so, the whole episode turned into a witch hunt, with the most isolated players on the Mets - Beltran, Castillo and Perez - ostracized even further.

Ultimately, they had to understand the consequences of their decisions. Fred Wilpon, the team's principal owner, is a co-founder of Welcome Back Veterans, a charitable organization for veterans and their families, so this was a particularly sensitive issue.

The Mets, as a team, could claim the moral high ground here, but both sides look terrible. In their difficult relationship with at least two of the three players - Castillo and Perez - they allowed the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a critically important hospital and its respected soldiers, to be dragged into the muck of their own team's infighting.

The Mets reached the point of no return with Castillo and Perez months ago. The only reason that neither has been released by now is prohibitive contracts. Castillo is due another $6 million next season in the last year of his four-year, $25-million deal; Perez has another $12 million coming in 2011, also the final season of his contract.

The lesson here is that the Mets needed to jettison both players as soon as they realized they were done in New York, which was a while back. As one Met asked Wednesday, "If they don't want someone, why are they still here?"

A team official said Castillo and Perez are expected to be Mets through this season. That could mean some nasty treatment at Citi Field if they ever venture from the dugout.

What the Mets and their fans think of Castillo and Perez is one thing. But both sides should leave the Walter Reed Army Medical Center out of those messy divorce proceedings. The hospital and the soldiers deserve to be treated with more dignity than that.