Sandy Alderson stood in a corner, unnoticed at first, then surrounded by a soggy battalion of reporters. Of the dozens of men in this room who had earned the opportunity to savor this moment deeply, and the right to fill notebooks with told-you-so’s, Alderson stood on top of that peak at this seminal moment.

Except to do so would be to abandon so much of who Alderson is, and what he has been, for the 30 years he has been a public baseball figure, and for the honorable life he already had lived by the time we first learned his name.

“This isn’t about me,” he said, once, twice, 30 times.

“I’m happy for our owners,” he said. “I’m happy for our players. I’m happy for our fans.”

?Modal TriggerPhoto: Marines CorpsThis has long been what we’ve seen of Sandy Alderson, the stoic, the son of a man who was an Air Force pilot for 33 years, who saw action in Vietnam himself as a Marine, who was once literally such a quintessential embodiment of the Corps’ A-Few-Good-Men motto that he was featured on an ROTC recruiting poster in the 1960s.

Every now and again, he will drop his guard, offer a quip or a glib observation, including this favorite a day or two after he joined Twitter just before spring training in 2012: “Will have to drive carefully on trip; Mets only reimburse for gas at a downhill rate. Will try to coast all the way to FL.”

Every now and again, you will get another fleeting glimpse of Alderson that colors what he must have been like as a young officer, believing in duty and honor above all else; the late-season skirmish with Scott Boras was surely rooted in that, Boras’ side-door agendas in regard to Matt Harvey’s innings limit clearly flying in the face of how Alderson prefers to do business.

But really, that’s it. That’s how Alderson always has wanted it, and he proved as true to that during the prosperous times of August, September and October as he did for so many of the bad days and nights that preceded them. And in the same way he never lashed out at his critics — and by early last summer, that pool had swelled considerably (and, yes, I was as loud as any) — it would never have occurred to him to gloat when the worm officially turned.

Today, we are given a difficult reminder that Alderson is, of course, very much human, that he isn’t the two-dimensional model on that old Marine poster or merely the ultra-disciplined ascetic we see so often running the Mets’ baseball operations.

The announcement that Alderson is battling cancer came with a hopeful statement from Jeff Wilpon — “The doctors believe and have told Sandy that the cancer is very treatable and are optimistic about a full recovery” — and for that there is a genuine sense of hope and relief amid the flood of warm wishes and good thoughts pouring his way.

Everything we know about Alderson insists he will deal with his illness the way he has dealt with every other impediment he has ever encountered: Quietly, seriously, with fierce belief and redoubtable discipline. These have never been things he never has been comfortable talking about, but absolutely has been at ease exhibiting.

Sometimes, it has made him appear outside the realm or the affect of basic human emotion. Just not today. Just not now. Probably never again.

Bumped