PORT ST. LUCIE – He tried to slip into town beneath a mask of humility and a shroud of self-deprecation, declaring himself merely one piece of a big orange-and-blue puzzle, one modest troubadour in Omar and Willie’s Traveling Road Show.

“I really don’t like cameras,” Carlos Beltran said with that thousand-kilowatt smile backlighting his words. “But I guess I’ve got to deal with it.”

Yes, there are plenty of things to deal with when you have been christened the $119-million savior of a baseball team that’s been rotting in the weeds. There are the cameras. There are the gaggles of fans, many of them wearing freshly-minted No. 15 jerseys, eager for a glimpse of their Latin messiah.

There are the inevitable comparisons to the other Puerto Rican center fielder in New York, Bernie Williams. Beltran was talking about measuring up to Williams yesterday, and someone mentioned Williams’ four World Series rings.

“Well then,” Beltran said, “I hope that in the seven years I am here we get five of them.”

And so Day One of the New Mets dawned with a polite round of laughter and a bashful grin. Beltran arrived at Tradition Field just before 8 o’clock yesterday morning, easing his dark blue Escalade with the Texas plates past the fan gate, into the eager embrace of a success-starved baseball populace.

He is everything the Mets have yearned for, a star of the highest order, a five-tool wonder who has had Mets fans wishing away the moments to Opening Day since climbing aboard the caravan in early January. New York City is a town fueled by stars, on the basketball court, on the Broadway stage, at the Bottom Line.

And on the baseball diamond most of all.

Across too many years, most of those stars have crowded the other side of the Triborough Bridge. The Mets? Mike Piazza filled the part nobly for a couple of seasons, but the past few have been a blur of injury and faded glory. There has been a dreadful dearth of star power in Flushing, and it was killing the franchise, bleeding it dry.

That isn’t a problem now. There is Piazza, who reported in terrific shape. There is Pedro Martinez, easing into a leading role as clubhouse needler and first-ballot immortal. There is Tom Glavine, still 38 wins shy of 300, still possessing the belief that he remains on the short list of baseball’s elite pitchers.

And there is Beltran. Star of stars. Hope of hopes. The seed around which everything else around here has been sown.

“I really believe we have the opportunity to win a lot of ballgames,” Beltran said. “If we all do our part, I have no doubt we will be successful. I plan on doing my part, for sure.”

It sounds so good, looks so perfect, and so it was with a decided dose of trepidation that the Mets awaited the arrival of another celebrated center fielder yesterday. Mike Cameron doesn’t play the position anymore, hasn’t from the moment Beltran autographed his contract, and Cameron’s words say that isn’t a problem for him even as his eyes say something entirely different.

“I won’t go there,” Cameron said, asked point-blank if he thought Beltran a better center fielder than he.

“I might,” he said, when asked if his mind might wander in right field while longingly watching Beltran patrol center.

“I don’t want to think about it,” he said, asked about the trade talk that will swirl above his head all spring.

Maybe it’s too much to ask a professional like Cameron to willingly cede his turf to a superstar like Beltran. But it shouldn’t be. The Mets needed Beltran, and if it meant bruising Cameron’s feelings, it rightly didn’t matter. Cameron said he would rather play right field on a contender than center on a cellar dweller.

He’d better mean it, and he’d better be clear about it. This is Beltran’s team. It happens to be a better team if Cameron is on it, but only if he buys into it in full. He says he will. For everyone’s sake, he’d better be on the level.