ST. LOUIS – Nothing happens at spring training without the field coordinator’s approval. He is the man who organizes a seemingly unmanageable situation and makes sure spring training runs smoothly.

He remains anonymous, takes his lumps when things go poorly, is taken for granted when everything goes smoothly.

Bobby Floyd is the Mets’ field coordinator. Floyd’s son brought his best friend by the Mets’ spring training complex one day. All of the sudden, the spring training coordinator wasn’t taken for granted any longer.

Floyd’s son’s best friend took the mound, started throwing and jaws dropped all over the place. Minor league pitching coordinator Rick Waits showed him a few pointers, he picked them up the way a calculus genius picks up two plus two equals four. Jaws dropped a little further.

Left-hander Rick Ankiel, 21, was only a sophomore in high school then. He attended Port St. Lucie High School.

It would be a beautiful story to be able to write that Ankiel was drafted by the Mets, contended for National League Rookie of the Year honors at age 21, started Game 2 of the National League Championship Series for the Mets.

It didn’t happen that way. Ankiel pitched against the Mets instead of for them last night at Busch Stadium in Game 2 of the NLCS.

Ankiel, a pitcher with high first-round talent, was bypassed until the Cardinals selected him in the second round of the 1997 draft. Aggressive agent Scott Boras, who makes no attempts to hide that he goes for each last cent with players in the draft, represented Ankiel. That’s why he slipped to the second round.

Then Mets general manager Joe McIlvaine and Boras had a notoriously bad relationship dating back to McIlvaine’s years in charge of the Padres. McIlvaine steered clear of Boras clients in the draft, according to Mets minor league coordinator Jim Duquette.

The kid’s father’s shady side didn’t have anything to do with it?

“That’s something we didn’t even know about,” Duquette said. “That’s something we probably should have know about, but we didn’t.”

The Mets passed on the local kid, but it never was a question of talent.

“He was so polished,” Duquette said, looking back on Ankiel as a sophomore. “That’s what I remember about him. He seemed to have such good poise on the mound. On the mound, he was all business.”

Off the mound, Ankiel has a reputation that rivals that of Jason Isringhausen’s when he pitched for the Mets. Word around baseball is he likes to keep late hours, likes to enjoy himself, lives a lifestyle similar to a lot of college kids his age.

And then there is Ankiel’s father, Richard. He started serving a six-year sentence for drug smuggling in May. His sentence was not to begin until July, but it was moved up when the elder Ankiel was arrested for throwing a loaded gun out the window of his pickup truck. The arrest came after a motorist complained that a man in a pickup had pointed a gun at him.

Even while all this madness took place with his father, Rick pitched so well in helping the Cardinals into the playoffs via the Central Division title that he was handed the ball for Game 1 of the Division Series against the Braves.

Ankiel went 11-7 with a 3.46 ERA and struck out 233 batters in 208 innings. Then came the memorable meltdown in Game 1 against the Braves. He threw five wild pitches in one inning. He choked, plain and simple.

“I’m trying not to forget about that day as much as I can,” Ankiel said.

He said that his experience pitching for the Junior Olympic team when he was a junior in high school was every bit as much pressure, but nobody believed him when he said it.

“I had seen him throw at the complex, but in the Junior Olympics was the first time I really got to see him in competition,” Duquette said. “Again, he was very poised, very impressive.”

Ankiel, a major talent shy on experience, is one of those pitchers who promises to be dangerous every time he takes the mound. It’s anybody’s guess as to which team’s title hopes he will endanger the most, his own team’s or the opposition’s.

Even for a guy who has been through as much as Ankiel, handing the ball to him in Game 2 of a best-of-seven series his team trailed was asking a great deal.