David Wright 'incredibly grateful for the honor' of Mets retiring his No. 5

It was a father playing catch with his son. They’d done it before, back in the Little League days, but it had been a long, long time since then.

Rhon Wright doesn’t consider himself a great athlete and David, his son, was (and is) one of the most decorated Mets in franchise history. But at the time, David’s body was betraying him - the result of a slew of injuries that began with a spinal stenosis diagnosis in 2015 – and Rhon was still a dad, still his old Little League coach, and still his biggest supporter. So, when David had no one to play catch with while he tried to recover from that injury and the litany of others that would follow, Rhon flew to California to toss the ball around with his son.

He followed him to Florida, where David began what would ultimately be a futile attempt to get fully healthy. But even then, there was no ignoring reality. “I realized not much long after he did that it wasn’t in the cards,” Rhon said this week. “It wasn’t going to happen.”

There’s an inexorably tragic element to the fact that The Captain, a lifelong Met, had to cede his career far too early, and not on his own terms. But this is baseball, a game so dominated by failure, it teaches you that true achievement lies in the short but enduring moments of triumph.

So, there was still another game of catch to be played: this one, between a father and his daughter.

On Sept. 29, 2018, Wright, body so battered it took him hours to prepare for his game, crouched at home plate at Citi Field while his two-year-old daughter, Olivia Shea, threw out the first pitch. We know the rest: Wright made two plate appearances, popped out in his final major-league at-bat, and said goodbye amid a torrent of tears.

But Wright’s story doesn’t end there. It can’t. And, in all likelihood, on July 19, another game of catch will be played. That’s the day the Mets will retire Wright’s No. 5 and enshrine him in the team’s Hall of Fame. He’s just the eighth player to have his number retired and only the second to be enshrined on the same day, joining Tom Seaver.

And, because baseball is about second chances as much as it is about failure, it sounds like it’s time for the other kids to get into the mix.

“All the kids are going to remember this,” Wright said Wednesday, referring to his children, Olivia, 8, Madison, 6, and Brooks, 4. “They’ve been talking about it since I got the call from [owners] Steve and Alex Cohen. They’re really, really, really excited. My oldest, who threw out the first pitch before my last game, thinks she’s like some sort of pseudo-celebrity...so my other kids are certainly jealous, so maybe we can somehow work that in.”

That is, of course, the nature of family (and sibling rivalry) to a T, and it makes sense that Wright wants every member involved. After all, for a long, long time, David Wright was the New York Mets – enough so that his heartbeat still thrums through the core of this franchise. There’s his real family, and then there’s this extended family – the one that watched him grow up, rise through the ranks, wring out every shred of ability from his modest frame, ascend to the captaincy, and try so, so hard to get back on the field.

Between 2014 and 2019, Wright suffered a left rotator cuff contusion, strained his hamstring, tried to fight through spinal stenosis, had a herniated disk in his neck that required surgery, and dealt with a shoulder impingement. Before that, his talent – which both he and his father attribute to hard work rather than preternatural ability – was undeniable. What he meant to this franchise exceeded even that.

Wright is the Mets' all-time leader in hits (1,777), RBIs (970), runs (949), doubles (390), extra-base hits (658) and walks (762). He’s second in games played (1,585) and home runs (242), third in batting average (.296) and fourth in stolen bases (196) and on-base percentage (.376). He is the last Met to wear the “C,” and only the fourth bestowed the honor.

His charity work is well documented, having founded the David Wright Foundation – meant to help children in need – at 24. To date, he’s raised over a million dollars for a hospital in his local town of Norfolk, Va., according to team historian and vice president of alumni relations Jay Horwitz.

In the clubhouse, he led by example, said former teammate Daniel Murphy. He worked harder than anyone on the team, spoke when he needed to, and bore the slings and arrows of many a mediocre Mets season so no one else had to.

“Nobody ever came to my locker for the better part of five years when I was there,” Murphy said – a period that intersected with four straight fourth-place finishes. “When things weren't going well, everyone wanted to talk to David. Vocally, he represented us in the clubhouse. He’d tell everybody we're not playing quite as well as you’d want or as we’d want, but hot dog, we're trying as hard as we can out here.”

Wright wasn’t just talk, though. And though his prematurely shortened career is one of this franchise’s lowest moments, it showcased its captain’s character like nothing else.

Behind the scenes, he did everything he could to play for as long as he could. And he told very few about it.

At first, Murphy didn’t comprehend how much work it took for a hobbled Wright to get ready to play.

“I would underestimate it,” he said. “He knew what it was like to get ready for a seven o’clock game. When he was young and healthy, he was going to bust you in the mouth, and when he was old and a little broken, he was going to still bust you in the mouth, because it was only seven o’clock that mattered…He didn’t get that extra kind of rest time away from the ballpark. It was like, no, he wakes up, he eats breakfast, gets ready for seven. He just stacked it up and did it over and over again.”

Rhon got the full view when he’d accompany David to rehab assignments in Port St. Lucie.

“He was trying to work his way back,” Rhon said. “Just knowing how hard he worked at coming back and how much he wanted to do it, it was sad. But he left it all out there. He did the best he could and it just wasn’t in the cards.”

Wright says as much, which is probably why he doesn’t seem to carry the heavy shadow of regret, though some still lingers.

“Every player, including myself, has regrets. ‘What if this were to happen? What if that didn’t happen?’" he said. "I can honestly look at you and say that I felt like I got the most out of my six-foot, 200 pound, very little athleticism body. I reached my ceiling and I don’t think what a lot of players can say is that I put my head on my pillow at night and say I left it all out there. I gave it everything I had. I worked as hard as I could and there’s not really anything that I would have done differently.”

Now, most people would argue with Wright on the “athleticism” part. But that, too, is what makes the captain, The Captain.

“The bias is coming out, but David has always been pretty humble,” Rhon said. “We’re just really proud as his parents.”

As if to prove the point, David demurred when talking about the number retirement. Never mind that he hit the first home run at Citi Field. Never mind that his home run in the 2015 World Series – the one that came months after his spinal stenosis diagnosis, and rocked Citi to its very studs – is one of the most memorable moments in team history. (Murphy exhales loudly when asked about it: “The place was buzzing…he cracked that thing.”)

But no. Asked to talk to reporters about his ineffable legacy, Wright took a moment to say that…well, he wasn’t sure he belonged among the likes of Seaver and Mike Piazza and Willie Mays.

“I don’t think it’s ever going to hit me,” he said. “I truly feel like it’s a bit undeserved given the skill and the accomplishment of some of the numbers that I’ll be amongst up there. You know, I joke that there should be a special section maybe for my number because it’s probably not deserving of being amongst the really, really good players in the organization. So I’m incredibly grateful for the honor. I don’t take it lightly.”

And that, really, is all you probably need to know about the seven-time All Star who led the franchise in multiple categories, who embodied the captaincy at every level, and who forced his broken body to do what many healthy ones could not.

It began with a game of catch, and, in July, it will likely end with a game of catch. And then, Wright’s No. 5 will officially join the family he’s been a part of from the beginning.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.