Let the celebration commence: the last of the at-large Mets are coming home from their baseman’s holiday, a.k.a. the World Baseball Classic. They can get back to being the team they’re paid to be, the one we’ll care about in two weeks when whatever happened in the WBC is tucked away in memory’s recesses for a few more years. Honestly, when I ran across the above pictorial salute to the “Classic” at the All-Star FanFest last summer, I had completely forgotten the first one had ever taken place in 2006.
But no need to be a total curmudgeon about this. While I had no use whatsoever [1]for this tournament at this time of the preseason, and it still offends me that Mets weren’t in Mets camp, I have to applaud our David Wright for looking out for one Mets fan in particular, U.S. Army Sgt. Felix Perez, a kid from New Jersey who was injured in Iraq in ’04. It was noted in the press that Perez was greeted warmly in Miami by Team USA during the WBC semis last week. David made sure Felix continued to feel the warmth in Los Angeles over the weekend. As reported by Christian Red in the Daily News [2], Wright saw to it that Perez would be at Dodger Stadium for the game against Japan last night, all expenses paid by the Mets’ third baseman. There’s a huge difference between the uniform Perez wore in harm’s way for the United States and the one Wright put on for a few weeks, but David…he’s the kind of guy who makes me proud of my team and my country.
Felix, too.