Friday, July 18

Welcome back to the Mets Beat newsletter! Anthony DiComo has covered the Mets for MLB.com since 2007, including the past 16 seasons full-time on the beat.

NEW YORK -- To explain why David Wright’s number retirement is such a big deal to so many people, I want to excerpt the first two graphs of my acknowledgements section from “The Captain,” the memoir I co-authored with Wright in 2020. 

On one of my first afternoons as an MLB.com intern in 2007, I stood in the Shea Stadium clubhouse as my mentor, Marty Noble, scanned the banks of lockers to offer me a scouting report on various Mets players. So-and-so was a good guy. So-and-so was a great quote. 

“And David,” Marty said, motioning to Wright’s locker, “is what everyone says he is.” 

Covering Wright over the next decade-plus -- past the end of his playing career, into his retirement and through his Mets Hall of Fame ceremony this Saturday at Citi Field -- Wright proved that point repeatedly. He was gracious with his time and graceful in the clubhouse, willing to say the things that mattered and capable of stating them with eloquence. He did not shirk responsibility, ever. 

• Come salute The Captain! See David Wright get his No. 5 retired on Saturday

More than that, he acted as an older brother for a generation of Mets, teaching them the things that came naturally to him. 

“He just does everything the right way -- annoyingly so, sometimes,” said one of Wright’s best friends, longtime Mets bullpen catcher Dave Racaniello. “Like, it’s incredible. You talk about somebody who could go into politics -- there’s no skeletons.” 

Politics, of course, was never Wright’s calling. What he chose was baseball, a sport that alternately loved and loathed him, blessed him and cursed him. Wright was given a Hall of Fame skill set and the work ethic to nurture it. Then the game took it all away without any designs on returning it. 

Because Wright is human, he has pondered the what-ifs of his career. He has chosen to accept them. Rather than ruminate on time lost to injuries in his 30s, Wright is grateful for the 14 seasons he did have in the Majors. Rather than focus on the fact that he may never make it to Cooperstown, Wright feels humbled that 32 Hall of Fame voters chose to recognize him in January. Rather than focus on his lack of a World Series ring, Wright cherishes the fact that he made it to a Fall Classic at a time in his career when that was not a given. 

The basement of Wright’s home is full of curated mementoes from his playing career -- a Mets World Series jersey and a Team USA one from the World Baseball Classic, along with signed bats from several of the peers (mostly third basemen) that he respected most. There’s a No. 5 panel from the Green Monster in Boston, which Dustin Pedroia presented to him before his retirement. The entire room drips with nostalgia. 

 
Saturday’s ceremony will cast a similar glow across a wider space. Figures from Wright’s past have been flying in from across the country to attend. Fans have had the date marked on their calendars for months, with the game virtually sold out. They’re all coming for Wright. Who gets to experience that sort of thing in life?  

Wright does not want people to feel bad for him, because baseball gave him so much -- a career, a dream life, ultimately a wife and three children. Saturday’s ceremony will force perspective for him. Are there things Wright would change, if given the chance? Yes, like all of us, he would fix some imperfections in his story. 

That doesn’t mean he’d ever complain about the way it all happened. 

Off which pitcher did Wright homer in 2015 World Series Game 3? 

A) Danny Duffy 

B) Luke Hochevar 

C) Yordano Ventura 

D) Edinson Vólquez 

At the start of this decade, Mets officials relaxed their standards for retiring numbers. Once Wright’s No. 5 heads to the top of Citi Field on Saturday, the team will have successfully cleared a backlog of deserving candidates, including Jerry Koosman, Keith Hernandez, Willie Mays, Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry and Wright since 2021. 

It should be noted that just because the Mets have become more liberal about retiring jersey numbers, that doesn’t mean their standards have disappeared. 

Among those Mets who are no longer playing, Gary Carter and Carlos Beltrán stand out as two potentially worthy of the honor. Active players with a chance include Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo and Juan Soto, but all four will need to finish their careers before that conversation can take place. Wright’s friend Jacob deGrom might have been a lock had he struck around Flushing… but he didn’t. 

Let the debate rage. I dove into the topic more in depth in this newsletter late last year. 

• Ready for a trip down memory lane? I’m going to dump some older Wright content here, beginning with the Top 11 moments of his career. (There were too many good ones to limit it to 10.) 

• I believe the stories that best define Wright are the ones off the field, that fans tend not to see. One of them revolves around Wright’s relationship with late Mets director of public relations Shannon Forde, which remains important to him to this day. 

• This is one of my favorites, because it’s just so quirky. The Mets selected Wright No. 38 overall in the 2001 Draft. But the trade tree that netted them that pick goes back more than three decades, involving a dozen transactions and 30 players. Check it out here. 

• Finally, if you enjoyed those stories, check out this longer excerpt of “The Captain,” the memoir I co-authored with Wright in 2020. (And if you like that, please consider purchasing the book!) Enjoy the number retirement ceremony, everyone. 

C) Ventura 

Wright’s first at-bat of Game 3 ended in a two-run homer off Ventura, his only long ball of that postseason. 

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