But, frankly, I'm not feelin' it. Right now, I'm so sick of the negativity that seems to hang over everyone's lives that I'm desperate to talk about something positive. Almost anything, in fact.
And, since it's not only the end of the month, but also the end of the baseball season, there's a very convenient way to do that.
I'm going to talk about David Wright.
If you're not a baseball fan, or a New Yorker, you probably don't know who Wright is. For most of the past 15 years, he has been the New York Mets' regular third baseman, on a team that, prior to his arrival, was notorious for not having a regular third baseman.
Wright grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, the home of the minor-league (AAA) Norfolk Tides. At the time, the Tides were the top minor-league affiliate of the Mets, the last stop before the big leagues. As a consequence, Wright grew up a Mets fan, even though they were not the closest major-league franchise to his home. A gifted athlete, Wright was ultimately drafted by the Mets, and got to play before his hometown family and friends on his way to the major leagues.
When he was called up from Norfolk in the summer of 2004, Wright made an instant impression in a town where making any kind of impression at all is, to put it mildly, a challenge. Not only for his all-around ability in playing third base, both offensively and defensively, but also for the way he conducted himself as a person, whether with fans, fellow players, the media, and anyone else my failing memory has left off of that list.
No tabloid scandals. No stiffing fans asking for an autograph. Always accessible to the press, and always willing to cooperate with their demands (of which, in New York, there are a lot). No bragging about being indispensable, even though, in just a few short years with the team, he pretty much made him so.
Perhaps, in our badly divided state as a nation, it is most poignantly summed up by this simple fact: a white man from the South, Wright's best friend on the team was (and still is) Jose Reyes, from Villa Gonzalez in the Dominican Republic. A shortstop, Reyes played next to Wright for their best years, and formed a friendship that will always link them in the minds and hearts of Mets fans.
Wright, of course, is only human, so I'm sure that, somewhere inside of him, he has faults. But nothing that damaged the allegiances of his family, his friends, his fellow-players, and most of all his fans. That's an incredible accomplishment.
Unfortunately, fate, or whatever prime mover you believe in, through a spanner into the works of what should have been a Hall of Fame career. It did so in the form of spinal stenosis, a medical diagnosis that Wright received a few years ago.
I'm not a medical professional, so I'm going to refer you to this. Basically, spinal stenosis is a narrowing of the space occupied in the spine by the spinal cord. This puts intense pressure on the cord producing equally intense pain. There is limited treatment for it in the form of surgery, but that treatment is palliative in nature rather than curative. Living a normal life with spinal stenosis is difficult at best; maintaining a career as a major-league player is impossible. Just ask Don Mattingly, the former New York Yankees first baseman, whose career ended prematurely as a consequence of spinal stenosis.
As is Wright's, now. Today will be his last game as an active player Fittingly, it will be in front of Mets fans at home, with family members present, and with Reyes next to him at shortstop. He will have five innings, and two at-bats, and call it a career. There will be a ceremony honoring him at the end of the game, and a presser, and, in the days to come, perhaps other related events as well. But, from a games-and-stats standpoint, today will be it.
It's difficult for me as a fan to avoid feeling not only a sense of loss, but also a sense of injustice, about this far-too-soon termination of the baseball career of the best player to wear only a Mets uniform. Had he been blessed with more health and more time, there is little doubt that he would have had the numbers to make an easy and early entrance into Cooperstown. He might have had a chance to win a World Series, rather than just play in one. None of that is meant to be. And many, many people in that position would be tempted to ignore their good fortune in favor of cursing their ultimate fate.
I'm happy to say, however, that David Wright is not one of those people.
For the past two years, Wright has been on the disabled list, working as hard as possible to get back to the point at which he could play. The expectations from everyone but Wright were anything but high. Including those of people who cared about him the most. And including the medical professionals who consulted with Wright and the Mets.
Wright didn't care. He had to let his body tell him when it was time to call it a baseball day. He worked for a very long time to get that answer. He worked past the point at which most people would have called it a pleasure to give up. And, in the end, his body gave him the answer he didn't want to receive. But he heeded it. And, with the cooperation of everyone in the Mets' organization, he is being given a last opportunity again to do the one thing he wanted to do: to play.
I'll end this by letting him have the last say. It tells you why, whether or not you're a baseball fan, you should appreciate what makes him special, and why you should pray for more people like him.
When it’s all said and done, I want to be able to say I got the most out of my potential. I don’t want to look back, however many years from now, and say, ‘I wonder if I would have worked a little harder. I wonder if I would have done this or done that, how things would have turned out.’ I want to, when it’s all said and done, be able to put my head on my pillow and say, ‘I did everything I could do — good or bad.’
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