David Wright’s Big Game Stands By Itself

Swipe Tag Not Bad for a Guy With Spinal Stenois

Before this World Series began, I thought that anything more would be gravy.

No Yankee sense of entitlement, just humility and awe at seeing this team-on-the-fly in the World Series, against a team that plays the game right.

As a Met fan staying home and watching, I could not have wished a game like Friday’s for David Wright, but there it is – a two-run homer that energized the Mets, two more runs on a single later.

And two Jeterian plays in the field – a scramble into the corner to fetch a ball and hold the batter to a single, and a swipe tag that was validated by replay. He didn’t dive into the stands and bloody himself. But he would have.

I wrote about Wright nine days ago, and Tyler Kepner had a lovely column in Saturday’s NYT; I don’t have to go over it again –  upstanding leader, solid player, and now, for one manic night, the star of a World Series victory.

Noah Syndegaard’s strong six innings, perhaps you could trace them back to the day in spring training when Wright and Bobby Parnell dumped Syndegaard’s lunch in the garbage.

Friday was the reward for Wright, for Syndegaard, and maybe even for Parnell who ran out of velocity in his comeback.

No idea how the Mets will do, as of Saturday morning. But I would like to quote the eminent baseball sage, Johnny Damon, who on the night the Red Sox fell behind, three games to none, to the Yankees in 2004, stood in the crowded clubhouse at Fenway and calmly told reporters: "Unless I'm mistaken, we've won four straight before." (Turned out they had, eight times.)

The Mets have had their own streaks in this run. And David Wright had a game that he and Mets fans can and should always remember, on its own.