It is frustrating when you are an athlete and you are used to being able to do something, and do it with such ease, and then suddenly your body says, “Nope…not going to allow that anymore.” Most of the time it comes with age…the bones start to make noise, the muscles ache a little more often, and the eyesight is a bit off causing a delay in reaction and response time. But to be cutdown in the prime of your career has to be the most frustrating. It has happened all throughout the history of baseball. Just take a look at Sandy Koufax. Or Don Mattingly. Or the late, great Kirby Puckett.
It has not been the same without David Wright in the Mets lineup. His presence in the dugout and the clubhouse is a blessing for the young players on the team, but it not the same when you are not on the field.
When I started running a little over a year ago, I thought nothing of it. I am running. I played soccer. I played basketball. I played baseball. I played field hockey. I have run before…I can run now. How wrong I was. Running six days a week…taking the pounding. The human body was not meant to take the pounding that we sometimes expect it to take. I learned the hard way. I injured my knee. I injured my Achilles tendon. I work hard to come back and be ready to run each race. The stretching. The gym time. The massage. The acupuncture. It’s a lot of time and it’s not easy.
I don’t have spinal stenosis. I certainly don’t have a condition that could potentially cripple me. What Wright has gone through every day for years now…just to get back on the field for one more game, one last ground ball, one last at bat is astounding. I know what I go through and I can only look at David Wright and say, “Wow!”
David Wright has been the one and only player drafted by the Mets, who played his entire career for the Mets, and put up the kind of numbers that makes one a perennial all-star. Dare I say that not even Tom Seaver was drafted by the Mets, nor did he play his entire career with the Mets. And just the way Seaver never gave the team, the fans, the city, any reason to be anything BUT proud, so has David Wright. He has been a great player, a model citizen, the kind of player and person you could point to and tell all your Little Leaguers, and your own children, “Now that is someone special…pay close attention.”
