I wish Jeurys Familia the best in dealing with the arterial clot afflicting his right shoulder [1]: a speedy recovery, a return to full health, a refreshed ability to throw a baseball better than all but a handful of pitchers let alone people on the planet.
I wish anybody who has an arterial clot, a torn lat, a strained hamstring, an inflamed elbow, spinal stenosis and any other malady well. They don’t have to play for the Mets. They don’t have to play any kind of sport. Thing is, I don’t typically worry about total strangers who are in physical discomfort except in theory and only if they are brought to my attention. But I do reflexively worry about the well-being of individual Mets specifically because they’re Mets.
If you think about it too much, it’s weird. Familia, Syndergaard, Cespedes and so on (there may not be enough pixels to list them all) are gonna be fine in the broad sense. They are compensated at a handsome rate and they will continue to be so for the duration of their contracts. They can miss time and not fret the financial implications. None, to the best of our knowledge, is in a life-threatening medical situation. The absolute worst that can happen — no matter how much black magic we attribute to Ray Ramirez [2] — is a baseball player won’t play baseball anymore. That’s the absolute worst, and that’s unlikely to occur. These guys will receive the best of care, rehabilitation and training. Barring the absolute worst, they’ll be back.
Their next-worst case scenario is they won’t play as well as they once did, they will endanger their long-term earnings potential and they won’t live up to the all the athletic promise that has defined their endeavors since they were kids. That would be legitimately sad if it were to come to that, and there’s no guarantee it won’t, but chances are what most of these Mets are up against is temporary in nature. The lone certifiable exception as far as we know is David Wright, and it can’t be said David Wright hasn’t had a helluva career. We want him to have more of one, but if he never plays again, he has achieved mightily.
So really it comes down to guys we’ve never personally engaged missing a few weeks or months or maybe a year. It will be a drag for them not doing what they do best, what they presumably love to do. It will gnaw away at their competitive nature that they can’t compete. They will have to channel their energy and desire into overcoming an injury instead of an opponent. But it will probably work out all right eventually and they’ll still be baseball players.
Which leaves us to wait for them so we can root for them to make us happy, which is why we shudder every time we encounter a bulletin that says yet another Met is going on the disabled list. We are concerned because they’re human and we’re human, but mostly, when you get down to it, because they’re Mets players and we’re Mets fans. I guess that’s OK to admit.