WASHINGTON — What was it that Roy Campanella said?
“You have to have a lot of little boy in you to play baseball for a living.”
Well, let’s be perfectly frank here: There haven’t been a lot of days lately when David Wright has felt like a little boy. When you’ve got a cranky back, when you have to go through hours of treatment just to determine if you feel well enough to do your job every day? You feel a lot closer to 60 than to 6.
A lot closer to the end than to the beginning.
Still, Monday night, Wright got to feel like a kid again, a care-free, pain-free kid. Funny thing: You hit a ball on the sweet spot of the bat, you watch it soar over a fence, the last thing in the world you think about are the aches and the pains, the frustrations and the tribulations.
“Home runs,” he said, laughing, “are fun.”
His home run off Gio Gonzalez allowed the rest of his teammates to have a blast, too. Five days after Gonzalez smothered the Mets at Citi Field — which he does just about every time he takes the mound at Citi Field — Gonzalez had spent two innings taunting and teasing the Mets, and guarding a 1-0 lead.
Wright had helped Gonzalez build another layer of confidence, too. In the first inning, two on and nobody out, Wright stepped to the plate hoping to get the Mets off to a running start. Instead, he struck out for the 51st time this season. The Mets would go down quietly, and it looked like another day when the Mets’ offense would look like it was playing in quicksand.
Except here he was again: top of the third, two on, one out, Gonzalez handed that 1-zip lead and no doubt feeling a shade invincible. Wright has been an easy target this year, unable to get off on a roll, unable to get down his timing. Gonzalez thought Wright would be looking for a first-pitch fastball and he was correct: That’s exactly what he was looking for.
So he came with a changeup, 82 miles per hour. He’d thrown Wright the same pitch in the first inning, two others just like it last week in New York, and every time Wright had swung like the Bugs Bunny cartoon (“Strike one! Strike two! Strike three! You’re out!”).
This time he tried to hit it over the muggy, misty night.
With one swing it was 3-1 Mets, on the way to 7-1 Mets. With one swing it seemed Wright had unleashed the hounds on the Nats.
“That really kick-started us,” Terry Collins said.
It remains to be seen if it will kick-start Wright; in truth, it remains to be seen if anything can kick-start Wright. For those who live with spinal stenosis, just walking up a flight of stairs can be a challenge, and most of those folks don’t have to worry about making solid contact against sliders, changeups, sinkers and 97-mph heaters once they climb those stairs.
Still, this is now two games out of three when Wright has delivered what turned out to be a game-winning hit for the Mets. Saturday it was a walk-off single against Milwaukee on a 3-0 count when he gave himself the green light, knowing that’s what a guy with his career and his pedigree ought to have. Monday it was a game-altering blast.
It doesn’t crank the clock back to 2006.
But it’s not a bad start to a new phase of his season.
“When you’re a good player in other sports, you’re rewarded in different ways,” Wright said. “In basketball, you’ll get your points. In football, you’ll get your numbers. In baseball, there’s a lot of variables involved.”
A pause. A smile.
“And some luck,” he said.
And when it all happens for you, when the ball hits the bat the way it so often used to, the very best thing happens: instant (if temporary) amnesia. The ball flies out of the yard, you’re a kid again.
“It’s always good to stroll around the bases,” he said, especially when that makes it feel like a fine old stroll down memory lane.