Reese Kaplan -- Mike Puma's If These Walls Could Talk Part 9 of 9

In Mike Puma’s If These Walls Could Talk: New York Mets he covered a lot of territory.  Some of it was good and some of it less so.  The final chapter was both celebratory and gut wrenching as it profiled the career of lifelong Met David Wright.  A lot of people felt he was on a path to Cooperstown but his health issues derailed him from this eventuality and immortality.  

I started off asking Mike about where he felt Wright belonged in the pantheon of great third baseman.  He came up with a great analogy.  Said Puma, “Take a look at Scott Rolen.  He had the full career Wright might have had if he’d been healthy.  He was getting a lot of Hall of Fame attention during his first few years of eligibility.”

He made a good point.  If you look at the 2000 additional ABs available to Rolen he was able to surpass Wright in home runs and RBIs while garnering eight Gold Gloves and seven All Star Game appearances as well as a Rookie of the Year award back in 1997.  He finished with a career WAR of 70.1.

By  comparison Wright bested him in SLG, OPS and stolen bases.  He had a higher career batting average and picked up two Gold Gloves himself.  He also made seven All Star appearances and when you consider how much time he missed due to various injuries, his performance was doubly impressive.  

One of the classiest things Terry Collins ever said came around the time David Wright was named the team’s fourth captain after Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter and John Franco.  Terry extolled Wright’s value to the team when he commented, “David is undoubtedly one of my favorite people I have ever been around because the way he is with people, his respect for the game, the respect for the guys who play the game and the way it is supposed to be played.  His respect for the media...when David Wright was there he was always there and ready to answer a question.  He never belittled anybody, handled it professionally.”

Sandy Alderson realized that after the public relations disaster of allowing Jose Reyes to walk away, he needed to improve the Mets image and brand.  Securing David Wright would make both things happen.  He traveled to the Chesapeake Bay area where Wright lived, played golf with him and explained what was going to happen to the franchise and how Wright was going to be a major part of it.  The team was still reeling from the Madoff Ponzi scheme disaster, but Alderson extended Wright a $138 million contract extension, surpassing by $500K what had once been paid to pitcher Johan Santana.  

At the Nashville press conference set up during the Winter Meetings to announce the deal, Wright was pretty straightforward about his thinking.  "I’m humbled, privileged, emotional...It was very important for me from Day 1 that I finish what I started.  Things haven’t gone the way we would have liked the past couple of years, but that is going to change.”

The closest Wright ever came to controversy wasn’t even his own doing.  During a game in which Noah Syndergaard departed before its end, he went into the clubhouse and began to eat lunch from the clubhouse spread.  Wright informed the rookie that his place was on the bench watching the game.  To emphasize Wright’s point, Bobby Parnell picked up Syndergaard’s plate and dumped it in the garbage.  The media kind of ran with the story it was David Wright disrespecting Syndergaard but the truth was that he’d handled it in his usual quiet and professional way.  

Syndergaard commented on the differences between the old school way of doing things and how it is now.  “It’s tough to say how good a year Pete Alonso would have had if we didn’t encourage him to be himself.  I feel like him acting like himself he was able to flourish.  There was a little bit of that when I played with Harvey, but I can’t imagine what it was like when he came up with LaTroy Hawkins and John Buck and those kinds of guys.  They were as old-school as they get.”

When Wright came up as a rookie in 2004 it was veterans Joe McEwing and Cliff Floyd who helped the young third baseman adjust to being a big leaguer.  Floyd said, “Make time for yourself. Do not make time for the media, make time for yourself first, the media will respect that. Be accountable and be at your locker every day.  

"When you mess up, hold yourself accountable...If you do that, you will be fine in this city, because you already have everything you need to be an amazing ballplayer, barring any crazy injuries.”

Apparently what Floyd said was true as Wright’s first five years in the majors had him looking like he was going to be a sure thing when the Hall of Fame voting began when his career ended.  He had a .309 batting average over that span, hit for power, drove in runs, stole bases, earned his defensive awards and made five straight All Star games.  Then the first injury hit -- a beaning by Giants pitcher Matt Cain that left him with concussive symptoms and derailed his career.  

He rebounded well in 2010 during his second year at Citi Field, but then diving for a ball against Carlos Lee gave him pain in his back.  He was eventually shut down for the rest of the 2011 season.  He came back in 2012 and hit 21 homers and batted .306.  Everything looked to be back on track.

In 2013 he had major hamstring problems and was limited to about two thirds of a season which curtailed his accumulated statistics.  In 2014 he had only 8 home runs and dealt with a shoulder problem due to a rotator cuff inflammation which shut him down for the month of September.  He started 2015 on the DL with continuing hamstring problems and then the Mets announced his spinal stenosis condition.  He followed up with surgeries on his neck and his back, but it was pretty clear that his career was over.  

When the Mets arranged for him to have a ceremonial final game they flew Yoenis Cespedes up from his Florida home to attend the festivities.  When Wright was up for his final at bat, Cespedes was off in the batting cage enjoying a smoke and missed it.  The players saw what had happened and universally rolled their eyes at his mere presence at the 2018 event.  

Wright’s career with the Mets spanned 15 years with much of it lost on the DL, but no one who is a Mets fan has anything but positives to say about their former Captain.