PORT ST. LUCIE — The woman with the folk guitar and the too-short shorts arrives at the ballpark convinced she is the only one to come up with this zany idea of having Garth Brooks sign her son’s favorite instrument. She follows Brooks from field to field and stakes out a position near the front of an autograph line that will keep the country singer occupied for three hours after a long workout in the Florida sun.

“I’m your biggest fan,” Brooks hears a few thousand times a day. He’s so patient you would think each time was the first time.

Brooks easily is the most sought-after, most closely watched third baseman out of Oklahoma State at Mets camp.

Never mind that in a race from behind the ear to just out in front of home plate, Robin Ventura’s bat could lap Garth’s a few times. Outdoors, Garth is the talk of the camp.

Indoors, in the Mets’ clubhouse, where manager Bobby Valentine seldom ventures, a mushroom cloud of reporters visits the same locker every day. The northern-most locker of the same row where Ventura occupies the southern-most. Rickey Henderson’s locker.

Proving he still can close a great deal of ground in a short amount of time, Rickey went from not being in the same solar system as Valentine to being on the same page in less than a week.

Rickey’s legs will outlast the Rickey spring training story.

Meanwhile, Ventura, the most important story of the camp, breezes through his days without many distractions.

He is the biggest story of the camp because when the exhibition season begins Friday with Rickey Henderson leading off in Jupiter, the city in Florida, not the planet, someone else will be at third base. Whether Ventura will be in the lineup when the regular season begins in Tokyo is a matter of less certainty, though he remains confident he’ll be ready.

Torn cartilage was removed from Ventura’s right shoulder Dec. 6 in a 30-minute procedure, six weeks after he had cartilage damage in his right knee repaired.

“My knee is fine now,” Ventura said. “My shoulder still has a little way to go. I’m doing everything fine except throwing.”

Like any ballplayer coming off arm surgery, Ventura goes through phases of progress followed by holding patterns.

“I’m at one of those periods where it’s starting to progress,” he said. “I expect to be ready for the season. I don’t see any problem with that.”

Valentine said Ventura was as “banged-up” for an extended period of time last season as any player he had ever managed or coached. Despite that, Ventura appeared in 161 games and had a career year at the plate. He hit a career-high .301 with 32 home runs and a career-best 120 RBIs.

In his first season with the Mets, Ventura led the majors with a .980 fielding percentage at third base, became the first player in major league history to hit a grand slam in each end of a doubleheader (Todd Pratt didn’t lift him up between first and second on either one), hit his 200th career home run and batted .335 with runners in scoring position.

One of the resources Ventura tapped en route to that big season, John Olerud’s brain, is gone and will be missed as much by Ventura as anyone. While playing for the White Sox, Ventura noticed he tended to go on hot streaks that started when the White Sox played against Olerud’s Blue Jays. He watched how relaxed Olerud was at the plate and felt more relaxed himself.

“He waited so long to react,” Ventura said. “I get in the habit of wanting to go out and get it. He just let it come to him.”

Ventura gleaned as much listening to Olerud as watching him.

“It was like the one full year I played with Harold Baines with the White Sox,” Ventura said. “It was nice having someone to bounce things off of, nice having their brains to pick. As a left-handed hitter, you know you’re only going to face left-handers from the seventh inning on, so we talked about what we were going to do in different situations.”

Ventura called Olerud in the offseason, taking his temperature on his career decision, but he wasn’t so presumptuous as to try to convince Olerud to stay.

“That didn’t need to be said,” Ventura said. “He knew where everybody stood. It’s not like he had to be told how much he was liked here. It was a family decision.”

Olerud’s departure leaves Ventura and Darryl Hamilton as the only left-handed hitters in the every day lineup, which places even more importance on Ventura’s shoulder recovering in time to start the season.

“He’s not favoring at all when I see him,” Valentine said. “That’s a good sign.”

Nice to know somebody is watching the Mets’ most important story of spring training develop.