Rising Apple

Being embraced by the @Mets and New York City meant everything to David Wright. After being diagnosed with spinal stenosis, he officially retired from baseball, but not before one last goodbye: “September 29, 2018. I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. The last time I had the immense honor of putting on that number 5 New York Mets jersey and taking the field for the best fans in all of baseball. And, I gotta say, I’m not an overly emotional person. As my wife will attest, you’ll almost never see me cry. But that day? Wow. That whole experience threw me for a loop, and the tears…. They just kept flowing. It was like I couldn’t shut off the faucet. And it’s weird because you want to enjoy the moment as much as possible, but, at the same time, you know it’s the end. Like … this is it. So as happy as I was to be able to, I guess — and I’ll put quotation marks around this — ‘make it back,’ I knew getting back on the field in Queens that night also meant the end of my run. There was no coming back. As an athlete, you always want to go out on your own terms. You want to write your final chapter. Not many people get the opportunity to do that, though — and I guess you could say that I didn’t get the chance to do that either. But I did get that one final night to express how I felt about the city, and our fans, and about the organization. I couldn’t be more thankful for that opportunity.... Now, sure, selfishly … yeah, I wish with all my heart that I could’ve made it back and played a few more years and been able to show the fans the David Wright they remembered. I would’ve loved to have made that happen. But I gave it everything I had. I really, really did. It just wasn’t in the cards for me.” playerstribu.ne/Wright