Kevin Long grateful for his Carlos Beltran task that shaped biggest decision of Hall of Famers career

PHILADELPHIA — Kevin Long is trying to get the Phillies out of their hitting funk that led them to four straight losses heading into Sunday night’s game against the Yankees.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mike Puma about the inside buzz on the Mets.

But for a few minutes before the game at Citizens Bank Park, the hitting coach was transported back to the beginning of his coaching career, just after he retired as a minor league player and took over as the hitting coach with Kansas City’s Class-A affiliate in Wilmington, Del., in the spring of 1997.His first task was to take the organization’s young star, Carlos Beltrán, and help make him a switch-hitter.Nearly two decades later, Beltrán ended up in the Baseball Hall of Fame, inducted Sunday in Cooperstown.During his speech, Beltrán said becoming a switch-hitter was the “biggest decision of my career.”Just shy of 20 years old, Beltrán, a natural right-handed hitter, worked with Long in extended spring training and went on to become one of the best switch-hitters in the history of the game.“That was my first assignment as a coach,’’ Long said Sunday.“Somebody there thought he should be a switch-hitter and they put that in my hands, which I’m very grateful for.

It taught me a lot at a very young age.”Long, 31 at the time and having topped out at Triple-A as a player, was paired with Beltrán, in his third season in professional baseball.“It really wasn’t to get him down the [first base] line faster or anything like that,” Long said of the decision to teach Beltrán to hit left-handed.“Maybe he was struggling righty-on-righty.

I don’t know.Still, to this day, I don’t know.”The pair just went to work.“We hit every day at 10 or 11 in the morning, went to lunch together and came back and hit again,’’ Long said.Beltrán, who grew up in Puerto Rico, was also still learning English, and Long said the two learned how...