Mets' Francisco Lindor reveals childhood origin story behind intense desire to play every day
The Mets' Francisco Lindor tosses to first to complete a double play against the Rangers at Citi Field on Tuesday. Credit: Ed Murray/Ed Murray
Last year, when Francisco Lindor got his hand caught in a door in his Los Angeles hotel room, resulting in a crack in the tip of his right middle finger bone, he sat out for just a day.
In June, after he was up almost all night with his wife, Katia, as she gave birth to their second daughter, Amapola, Lindor showed up at the ballpark a few hours later, skipped going on the multi-day paternity list and begged into the lineup. Manager Buck Showalter didn’t oblige, but Lindor wound up pinch hitting that day anyway.
A couple of weeks later, when Lindor was so sick that he required IV fluids before a game, causing the Mets to delay finalizing their lineup, he wound up playing all nine innings (and the next day had one of the best games of his career).
For Lindor, the Mets’ ironman, the intense desire to play every game — to treat everyday player as a literal term — has a decades-old origin story involving his father, Miguel Lindor, and nervousness that became stubbornness.
“I wanted to show my dad I can play,” Lindor said Wednesday. “To this day, I still want to prove to my dad that I can play.”
The background, as shared by the Mets’ shortstop, goes like this: In the late 1990s, when he first started playing organized baseball in Puerto Rico, he “played up,” joining a group of older kids. He spent the first years of his life hanging around with an older brother and cousin, so by the time Lindor had a chance to go against his peers it was “boring in a way,” he said. Hence, seeking out older competition.
But when he was 4 or 5, everybody else was 6 or 7. When he was 6 or 7, everybody else was 8 or 9. Even as he got older and better, the others were older and bigger still.
“I used to make up excuses to not play because I was scared,” Lindor said. “[This was] when I was little little. I used to play up, so everybody was bigger than me, taller, stronger.
“My dad used to tell me I was made out of glass. Because I would always say something hurts, this hurts, I have a headache, I can’t play. So then ever since I was little, he would always say that to me. It stuck with me.”
Eventually, Lindor got sick of it. He set out to prove his father — who was and is “very strict,” he said — wrong.
“I told myself I was going to play every day and show my dad I could play every day,” he said.
As Lindor convinced himself to play every day, he continued to play up — all the way up. He made the varsity team at Montverde Academy, a private school outside Orlando, as an eighth-grader. He made his professional debut at age 17. He made it to the majors at 21.
Nine seasons into his major-league career, Lindor has become a staple for the Mets, earning the respect of Showalter by “posting,” as the manager calls it.
Lindor ranks third in the majors with 293 games played since the start of last season, trailing only Atlanta’s Matt Olson and Texas’ Marcus Semien, who played in their 294th games Wednesday.
“It’s a skill,” Showalter said once. “It sets a tone for a lot of guys. Without naming names, guys look around [and notice].”
With four All-Star selections, two Gold Gloves, two Silver Sluggers and a 10-year, $341 million contract, Lindor on the inside still is partially a little kid who wants to prove his dad wrong.
Even when Showalter wants him to rest — during, say, the Mets’ recent brutal four-day stretch of playing in 90-something-but-feels-like-100-something temperatures — Lindor has a way of talking Showalter out of it. When he is slumping or tired, he’d rather play through.
As for what Miguel Lindor thinks these days?
“Sometimes he says, hey, take a day off,” Lindor said. “But I still want to play every day.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
