10 years ago, Wilmer Flores cried on the field — and became a part of Mets history

On Friday night, former Mets fan favorite Wilmer Flores will be in town as the San Francisco Giants visit Citi Field.

There may be some tears.

There have been before.

Tuesday is the 10-year anniversary of the night Flores became a true Mets hero.

On July 29, 2015, Flores was playing shortstop when word began to filter around Citi Field that the Mets had agreed to a trade that would send Flores and injured pitcher Zack Wheeler to the Brewers for outfielder Carlos Gomez.

That word reached Flores, who began to cry on the field at the thought of leaving the team he had signed with as a 16-year-old in 2007.

The agreed-to trade did not happen as the Mets backed out because of concerns about a medical report involving Gomez’s hip.

But the sight of Flores in tears was real. Fans chanting his name — which only ratcheted up the emotions Flores was feeling — was real.

Two nights later, still a Met, Flores hit a walk-off home run in the 12th inning to give the surging Mets a 2-1 victory in the opener of an important series against the Nationals.

Hours earlier, then general manager Sandy Alderson had completed a trade for the righthanded bat he wanted: Yoenis Cespedes was acquired from the Tigers. Cespedes went on to hit 17 home runs in 57 games as the Mets won the National League East and made it to the World Series against the Royals with Flores as their primary shortstop.

There were many magical nights along the way to the Mets’ first World Series appearance since 2000. Few were more memorable than the Night When Wilmer Cried Because He Thought He Had Been Traded.

It all still seems a little hard to believe.

“It’s like a movie plot, right?” former Mets manager Terry Collins told Newsday last week in a telephone interview.

“It was fairy-tale like,” Alderson told Newsday, also in a telephone interview.

“Everyone knows what happened in 2015,” Flores told Newsday last season during a Giants’ visit to Citi Field. “I feel like they really appreciate when they see as a player that you really care about a team.”

Oh, they saw it. But not everyone in the ballpark that night knew what was happening right away.

“I didn't have any idea what was going on,” Collins said. “And Wilmer went up on the on-deck circle, and I heard fans coming down and saying, ‘Hey, we're going to miss you, we're going to miss you.’ And I thought, ‘What the hell are they doing?’

“Not very shortly after that, David Wright, who was hurt at the time, came up to me and said, ‘Hey, it's all over TV that he's been traded.’ I said, ‘David, he is not traded.’ He said, ‘Terry, I'm telling you, it's on TV. This guy's been traded.’

“I pointed to a phone in the dugout. I said, ‘You see that phone? That goes to Sandy Alderson. If this guy's been traded, Sandy would be down on that phone because he's not a Met anymore, and I got to get him out of the lineup, right? And since that phone's not ringing, he's still a Met.’

“Now Wilmer comes off the field. He was out playing defense. He comes off the field. He's crying. I go over to him, and I said, ‘Hey, you got to gather yourself. You're not traded.’ Sure enough, he goes out and the fans are chanting, ‘Wilmer, Wilmer.’

“So now he goes out and Sandy's phone rings: ‘You’ve got to get him out of the game.’ I said, ‘Has he been traded?’ He said, ‘No, but he's crying.’ ”

Collins did replace Flores with a pinch hitter in the ninth inning. The Mets lost, 7-3, with Lucas Duda hitting three solo home runs.

Then the postgame began. Collins and Flores were met by Alderson and then-COO Jeff Wilpon. Alderson also met with the media to announce that a trade did not happen, which he said was a first for him.

How did Flores handle it?

“I thought he handled it great," Alderson said. "I mean, he was emotional about it, but he was also professional about it, ultimately. And the two are not mutually exclusive. I think the fact that he did react emotionally initially really endeared him to the fans, and to some extent the organization, just through his kind of demonstrated loyalty and attachment to the organization.

“And then, of course, he responded a couple of days later in a critically important juncture and hit that home run. So that series of days, I think, really cemented Wilmer’s reputation among Mets fans for decades. Generations, probably.”

Gomez was later traded by Milwaukee to Houston, and he was healthy enough to homer against the Yankees in the Astros’ American League Wild Card game victory at Yankee Stadium.

The Mets weren’t paying particularly close attention to Gomez’s fortunes at that point. They beat the Dodgers in five games in the NLDS and swept the Cubs in the NLCS before losing a five-game World Series to Kansas City.

“I always say, ‘Everything happened for a reason,’ ” Flores told SNY over the weekend when the Mets were in San Francisco. “I was meant to play [in] a World Series that year.”

Flores left the Mets as a free agent after the 2018 season. He played one year with Arizona and has been with the Giants since 2020. Now a 13-year veteran, the 33-year-old has made a nice career for himself as a righthanded designated hitter/corner infielder.

And he has never been traded. Not once.

“I'm very proud of him,” Collins said. “Very excited that he’s had such a wonderful career after that date. There were a lot of people who said, ‘This guy can't play shortstop.’ Well, guess who played shortstop in 2015 in the World Series for the New York Mets?”

Said Alderson: "He's part of Mets history now."