Wright living dream with team he idolized
Mets captain makes Series debut for club he cheered for as a kid.
KANSAS CITY, MO. — Gary LaRocque thought back to a 2001 spring afternoon at Hickory High School in Chesapeake, Va. An 18-year-old came onto the field after his last class to take batting practice.
“Every ball he hit over the fence, he went over there and picked them all up, too,” said LaRocque, then the Mets’ director of amateur scouting. That kid? David Wright. Reminded of the story Monday on the eve of his World Series debut, he laughed.
“Who else is going to pick ’em up?” he said. “I went out and bought the baseballs, and baseballs are expensive. I wasn’t going to lose them.”
Wright hasn’t changed much in the past 14 years. Now a seven-time All-Star and the fourth captain in Mets history, his boyish enthusiasm invigorates his teammates.
He has organized early morning floor hockey competition that turns the clubhouse into a rec room. When he returned in August from four months on the disabled list, Wright greeted the Mets in the lobby of the Westin Philadelphia hotel. In full uniform. With cookies.
But there also is a stubborn seriousness. He called out young pitcher Noah Syndergaard for eating lunch during a spring training game instead of watching with his teammates on the bench.
“There are a lot of us who believed he would be to the Mets what Derek Jeter was to the Yankees,” said former Mets general manager Steve Phillips. “David has always been that sort of leader and face and voice of the organization since he’s been called up.”
Wright made it to the majors a little more than three years after signing. When the Mets finished fourth for the fourth straight season, he signed a $138 million, eight-year contract in December 2012 instead of waiting a year to find out his worth as a free agent.
Now he’s living his dream, gushing like a fan about seeing the Mets logo next to a World Series patch as they prepared to play the Royals.
“I knew that if you were to go somewhere else and maybe win right away, it wouldn’t have felt nearly as good or nearly as satisfying as being able to do it here for a team that I grew up rooting for, for a team that drafted me when I was 18 years old, almost like a second family,” he said.
New York has Mike Hampton to thank for Wright. New York selected Wright with the 38th overall draft pick in 2001, received as compensation when the pitcher left in December 2000 to sign with Colorado.
Wright’s work ethic filters through the entire Mets roster.
“When he walks through the door, people’s heads look up,” Mets manager Terry Collins said.
Wright grew up a Mets fan, attending games of their Triple-A farm team in Norfolk. He always wanted to play for them.
Wright’s smile is extra wide this week. He has been waiting for this since he was in his backyard, imagining walking to the plate in Game 7 of the World Series.
View more photos of the match at PBGametime.