It Shouldn’t Surprise You At All

I realized Bartolo Colon was the batter. I heard something about a ball hit into the gap. I put 40 and 2 together and zipped (in my own Bartolian fashion) from the radio in the kitchen to the television in the living room to bear witness to the breathtaking site — taking the breath of all involved, including Colon — of our immensely credentialed starting pitcher pulling into second with a double.

Wow, I said, that’s really something, though it wasn’t as something as it once might have seemed. We have seen Colon double. We have seen Colon homer. Granted, seeing Colon run each of the bases — taking third on a single that fell in front of Andrew McCutchen, tagging up and scoring on Yoenis Cespedes’s deep fly to right (I thought a couple of strong relays could have nailed him at the plate, but perhaps Gregory Polanco forgot who would be sprinting home) — was both a treat for the eyes and a dagger to the heart of the DH rationale. Yet the idea that Bart can contribute offensively is no longer absurd. Thus, it wasn’t the shock it might have been when he first became our cause.

We are not without the capacity to emit surprise. It was surprising that the second-inning hit-by-pitch that eventually sent Wilmer Flores out of Thursday night’s game versus the Pirates resulted, according to x-rays, in nothing more than a contusion. It was surprising to have Neil Walker and Michael Conforto back in the lineup. It was surprising to see the slumping Conforto (his dark forest now in its second solid month of bloom and gloom) homer directly after Walker. It was gratifying to watch Michael rob Jung Ho Kang of a run-scoring extra-base hit in the first, just as Curtis Granderson’s franchise-record 17th leadoff home run kept our cockles warm in the bottom of the inning. If you step back and realize Grandy has done more powerwise in approximately a season-and-a-half worth of leading off than any Met had done before him, his feat is kind of surprising. He’s a more accomplished home run hitter than those directly behind him in this particular procession — Reyes (16), Agee (8), Dykstra (8) — but I could swear Curtis only just got here.

That Colon would pitch well into the eighth, albeit after running strenuously in the third; and the Mets would homer thrice; and they’d withstand a bit of late-inning turbulence to hold on to defeat Pittsburgh, 6-4, was overall all very rewarding, but not that surprising. You shouldn’t get jaded, but when you follow your team closely, you do learn to detect patterns.

If you’ve been keeping tabs on the Mets long enough, you knew the news that came down Thursday regarding David Wright was on its way. Our Captain, after trying rest and rehab, went in for surgery on the herniated disk in his neck, confirming that his absence of a few weeks will extend into multiple months, possibly knocking out the remainder of 2016 and placing in question his Met future beyond.

Somewhere in the distant Met past, say before Colon and Granderson joined the club in 2014, the idea of losing David Wright for at least a hundred games would have been jarring and flooring. How do we get by without our Captain? It remains a valid question (especially after Flores had to exit), but not one that crash-lands from out of the blue. Unfortunately, we are skilled in David-deprivation. He missed much of 2015 with an ailment that has remained chronic and, pre-stenosis, had to absent himself for chunks of other seasons due to various maladies.

David Wright out for maybe the season, maybe longer, is not as surprising as a Bartolo Colon double that itself wasn’t totally surprising. That’s not an ideal state of affairs. But we get used to these things.

There is a temptation to fast-forward to whether David’s career is in jeopardy of being completely over. It’s a reasonable source of speculation, but can you imagine David Wright deciding, in so many words, ah screw it? Neither can I. He’ll give it his all because — and this isn’t a pang of romanticizing as much as it is a statement of fact — he’s a ballplayer. Playing ball is what he does. It doesn’t matter that his contract is lucrative and guaranteed. It doesn’t matter that he’s no doubt capable of spending his hopefully pain-free days pursuing other endeavors. He plays baseball. He has not voluntarily ceased doing so. Prior to the neck becoming too much of an obstacle to push through, he worked, by all accounts, as hard as he could so he could play. In his most recent (let’s not call it his last) game, he homered. He was hitting with power again. He was throwing better. Even physically compromised, 2016 David Wright presented a convincing facsimile of vintage David Wright.

I don’t picture David Wright, unless his post-surgery recovery literally kills him, not attempting to return to what he was doing before the pain overwhelmed him, what he has done since before any of us ever heard of him. Whether he’ll be able to succeed is a whole other issue, but for now, he’s on the disabled list, not the deceased list.

David is a helluva ballplayer. I speak in the present tense until further notice.

Not a career obituary by any means, but a touching appreciation — written before the surgery decision was announced — comes from James Schapiro of Shea Bridge Report. I recommend reading a gifted young writer paying tribute to the Met he’s grown up loving.