Mets’ Left Fielder Overcomes Slow Start : Big Mac Takes, and Gives, a Pounding

Kevin McReynolds is a Big Mac without too much relish.

McReynolds likes to hit homers and run down line drives in the gap for the New York Mets. He likes to fish and catch frogs in an Arkansas mud pond after midnight.

He doesn’t like to talk much.

When the game is over, McReynolds puts on his jeans, shirt, sneakers and hunting cap and makes a snappy exit for the parking lot.

“I just try to take my mind away from the game when I’m not here,” McReynolds said. “When I’m not here I don’t try and live and die baseball. But when I am here, I want to be in the best possible frame of mind I can be.”

McReynolds is somewhat shy and a little sensitive to what is said about him by the city slickers.

After he got off to a slow start this season, some of the papers reported that he was overweight by as much as 10 pounds.

Soon, some of the less-sensitive fans at Shea Stadium were calling him “fatso” and other nasty names.

He heard them, and it hurt.

He said his slow start was not a result of being overweight, but rather a pulled rib cage muscle that bothered his swing for about six weeks.

The injury has healed, and McReynolds has started hitting.

He homered against Montreal’s Mark Langston on Saturday and won Sunday’s game 2-1 with a leadoff homer in the 14th to help the Mets complete a three-game sweep and move within four games of first place in the National League East.

“I think it’s about that time,” McReynolds said. “We talked a good game for so long, it’s time now we put up or shut up.’