The bases were loaded with Mets in the fifth inning, and up to the plate trudged Bartolo Colon, with his lifetime .080 bat.

Just because you are built like Babe Ruth doesn’t mean you can hit like Babe Ruth.

So David Phelps threw this 91 mph fastball without a hint of trepidation, and The Bart-bino lofted it into left-center for the sacrifice fly that made it a 1-1 game, and the rising storm that is Citi Field cheered, and Mets mobbed The Bart-bino in the dugout following his seventh career RBI and second this season.

“This is my second full year in the National League, so I have to put more into it so I can get better at-bats and get better results,” Colon said through a translator.

Catcher Anthony Recker was surprised that Colon whacked at the first pitch.

“You don’t want a double play there, that’s the worst thing,” Recker said.

No problema!

“He’s been working really hard, actually, with [hitting coaches] Kevin Long and Pat Roessler on his swing, on bunting, on everything,” Recker said, “and he’s showcasing it all so far, so it’s been impressive.”

Colon never had an appetite for hitting, only pitching, and he found himself protecting a 3-1 lead in the seventh. He is much more comfortable with a baseball in his right hand, even if there are runners on first and second with one out.

And because he long ago stopped being the kind of power pitcher Matt Harvey is now, he doesn’t mind a bit of help from a Gold Glove center fielder like Juan Lagares, who charged in to pluck a bloop off the bat of J.T. Realmuto right off the green.

Then Adeiny Hechavarria bounced one toward the third base line, and you saw Colon pounce on it with quickness that belies any man his size, and fire to first to end the threat, and his night. He ended it with a 3-0 record, and a 4-1 win over the Marlins that gives the swaggerlicious Mets a six-game winning streak with Jacob deGrom and Harvey on deck and Citi Field fast becoming a House of Pain for visitors.

El Caballero Oscuro is The Dark Knight in Spanish. I tried that one around Colon, and he smiled and said: “El Gato.” The Cat!

“I don’t think many people would know this about Bartolo — he’s actually very athletic,” Recker said. “He’s a big man, but he can move.”

El Gato!

“He’s an incredible athlete,” Michael Cuddyer said. “When you look at him, first looks doesn’t mean anything.”

His teammates love him every bit as much as Mets fans do.

“He plays the game like a kid plays the game,” David Wright said, “and that’s I think what we all strive for. Me personally, that’s what I try to do, but it seems like he genuinely goes out there, you see him just flipping the ball up, a guy will get a hit off him and he kinda claps. It’s fun to watch him have fun. It’s kinda infectious.”

Colon (one walk in 20 innings) has a game plan and sticks with it. He allows a home run in the first to Giancarlo Stanton and doesn’t blink.

“You can’t take the pitch back,” manager Terry Collins said. “We’ve got all these theories, and he’s got his own style of calming himself down. When it starts to get to be a tough situation, we have all these techniques now we’re trying to teach guys on how to breathe and how to do this, and Bart’s got his own little thing that he does on the mound to get him back in focus, and it works.”

Collins cites Frank Tanana as the only other pitcher who has made the dramatic transformation from thrower to pitcher.

“He knows who he is as a pitcher,” Cuddyer said.

And a month from his 42nd birthday, perhaps El Gato is starting to know who he is as a hitter as well.