Mets catcher John Buck took a red-eye flight back from San Diego and rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital with about three hours to spare before his wife, Brooke, gave birth to the couple's third child Saturday.
Eventually, something he suspected — this isn't Buck's first trip around the major league block — was confirmed by manager Terry Collins: His playing time would be drastically squashed for Travis d'Arnaud, the franchise's catcher of the future.
"TC called me in there and said obviously I wouldn't be playing as much as I was before," said Buck, who was hitting .219 with 15 homers and 60 RBIs as the Mets scored a 5-3 victory in the first of a two-game series with the Braves at Citi Field Tuesday night.
"It's not my first year around, so I figured that obviously playing time would be lessened. But it's kind of the nature of the beast. You've got your top prospect up, you're not going let him just sit there, so I understand that."
Buck, 33, is in his 10th major league season, most of them spent in Kansas City. He is a steady, grind-it-out sort with 965 career starts in 10 years. But d'Arnaud is the future. He came with Buck from Toronto in the R.A. Dickey trade.
"As I told John, John Buck's not at the end of his career, by any means or stretch of the imagination," Collins said. "Don't think this is John Buck being the coach. This is John Buck being a professional and trying to help one of his teammates get better, as he would with Anthony Recker [who was demoted to Triple-A], as he's done with anybody else that would be up here. I told him, 'You got to get ready to play each and every day.' "
Buck understands that. He also stressed it is what he expected. Figure Buck's playing time for the remainder of the season will be somewhere between sporadic and what d'Arnaud gets. He will work with d'Arnaud the way he worked with Recker.
"He asks questions or if I see something to benefit him or the team or the pitchers, give them my two cents and let him kind of filter through that," Buck said. "He's here for a reason. He's a top prospect for a reason. He's being challenged now with playing in the big leagues because he has the skill to do so, and it's just having those experiences and I guess my role would be when he has those experiences ... I'll give him my two cents."
Buck worked with d'Arnaud in spring training and said he sees why the Mets are so high on the guy who is expected very soon be the primary receiver for Harvey, Wheeler and Co.
"He has great hands, he's got an aptitude to learn," Buck said. "He's obviously somebody who wants to learn, too, and has a great attitude about wanting to learn and get better, so I think that's probably the most at this point, probably the best thing he could have right now so. He obviously has the skills and ability. That's what got him here."
Collins said don't push Buck over the cliff just yet.
"I've got a schedule already written for probably the next two weeks, when he's going to catch, and I went over it with him, so we're on the same page with it all," Collins said. "You never know what happens, but certainly he's going to have a big role here in the last six weeks."
fred.kerber@nypost.com
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