Mack On: David Wright

PC - Mack Ade 

I knew this day would eventually come. I knew that David would eventually play his last New York Mets game and I would write something about it. What I didn’t know was the conditions in which these events would transpire.

It is hard to find someone that has said something bad to say about this guy.

I’ve told this story before. I was given my first clubhouse passes in 2008 for the spring training season in Port St. Lucie. I was writing a full page a week for a Hardeeville, S.C. newspaper, that was in Jaspar County, a county that bordered Savannah, Georgia.

The A-level minor league baseball team had become a Mets affiliate (Savannah Sand Gnats) in 2007 and I wrote for a year before submitting a request for a field and clubhouse pass. I was granted it and attended my first spring training beginning when pitchers and catches reported in April 2008.

I was pretty much lost in the clubhouse. The beat guys wanted nothing to do with me. Jay Horwitz never invited me to join the gaggle he would bring from locker to locker to ask specific player’s questions. And the few players I did know in the front line of lockers were too intimidated to do more than nod to me.

Back then, the Mets used to play and intra-squad game the day before the first spring training game. They would raise money for good causes and this particular year the cause was for the family of ex-Mets prospect  Brian Cole the best player you never saw play for this team. Cole was killed in a horrific auto crash he had in 2001 while leaving spring training and before reporting to Binghamton (please read the story using the link above). He was projected to be Mike Trout before there was a Mike Trout.

I wanted to do a story on Cole but couldn’t find anyone that wanted to talk to me. Everybody started heading out to the field to get ready for the game and it looked like the moment to create this story was being lost.

And then David Wright walked towards me.

He seemed to know I looked a little lost and asked me if he could help. Here was the captain of the New York Mets asking me if he could help me! I told him what story I was trying to write about and I asked him if he could give be a quote. I turned on my tape recorder and he did about 3-4 minutes on Cole.

My final question to him was what was it like to play with him and David paused. At that point he had to expose my lack of research on the subject and he told me that Cole had come and went before Wright joined the team (Cole died in March 2001; Wright was drafted in June 2001). He knew going into this interview that I was talking to the wrong person but instead of making me feel like as ass, he carried me through to the eventual last question.

I really felt stupid when this was over (I never used the interview) but there was a lesson learned and a fact confirmed when this was over.

Do your research was the lesson. Wright is a class act was the fact.