Professionalism

I was out a majority of the evening on Friday and didn't see any of the game. In fact, because I was seeing a show, I could only check the score at sporadic moments in the evening. But I was already in good spirits before the show began because I'd noticed that David Wright, in his first At Bat since coming back from the DL, had hit a 2-run Home Run off Cole Hamels that staked the Mets to an early lead.

By intermission, that lead had dwindled, but as the show and the game ended at relatively the same time, I was able to leave the Theater and get buzzed by my phone with the final score within a couple of minutes. The lead ultimately held up and the Mets came away with a 6-4 victory in Philadelphia, which is always nice no matter what the circumstances.

I can't really expound much on Matsuzaka, although from what I was able to grok, he pitched reasonably well and got betrayed by his defense a little in the 4th. That's the 3rd time in a row he's been OK, but just OK. I'm still not convinced he'll be anything more than a September fill-in, but hey, September fill-ins are still Mets, and I still want them to do well (I want all the Mets to do well, of course. Even Lucas Duda, except that he seems constantly unable to do so). So, really, the story of the game is Wright, who came back to finish the season when he certainly couldn't have been blamed for shutting it down and coming back fresh next season.

But has anything David Wright has ever done since he arrived on the Mets almost 10 years ago ever indicated that he would do something like that?

Of course not. Say what you will about David Wright, but he's never laid down. And you can only imagine that the last thing he wanted to remember from this season was that his ended with him getting injured and unable to come back. It's a testament to how much he cares about his place in the history of the Franchise and how much he respects the fans that root for him. So, in spite of the Mets playing out the string once again and in spite of the fact that he may not have been 100%, Wright came back, and hit one out in his first AB, and that spurred the Mets on to a win. A performance like this probably wouldn't have saved the Mets for the season, but having him in the lineup, and then thinking about what the Mets had been throwing out there over the last 6 weeks, well, you have to imagine that maybe there might have been a little more juice in the team if he'd been healthy. It might not have led to more wins, but it certainly would have meant a little more excitement.