PORT ST. LUCIE – Darryl Strawberry was going to be a Hall of Famer. We might as well start with the cautionary tale. We might as well be honest that predicting how something as fragile as a baseball life will turn out makes picking Wall Street winners seem effortless.
Because some place between the white lines of the game and the white lines of cocaine, Strawberry forfeited too much of his gift. The gilded life he should have had as a Met – from golden child to Cooperstown-bronzed plaque – was surrendered to his demons. That Strawberry remains the best homegrown position player in Met history speaks more to the vast wasteland of the Met farm system than Strawberry’s vast skills.
Interestingly, Strawberry is now back in organizational good graces, just as the franchise that pimped Shawn Abner and Gregg Jefferies and Alex Escobar as can’t-miss stars has not one, but two more youngsters to promote as cornerstones. Jose Reyes and David Wright give the Mets their latest chance to have what they have never had in four-plus decades: an elite player go from soup to nuts as part of their organization.
Over four decades is it really possible the best position player that a big-market team like the Mets has been able to develop and keep for an entire career is Ed Kranepool? My kingdom for a Tim Salmon.
Now here is Reyes back at shortstop, side-by-side with Wright at third base, taking the field together for an intra-squad game yesterday at Tradition Field. Do Met fans dare imagine the duo bringing to the left side of the infield what Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker brought to the middle of the Tigers’ diamond?
“We both have come up with this organization and both have come to love this organization,” Wright said. “I speak for us both when I say we love being Mets and I speak for us both when I say we both bleed orange and blue.”
Such sentiments can only hearten the Met faithful. Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez have motivated the disillusioned base this offseason. Still, the strongest fan attachments are to homegrown guys. Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and Bernie Williams belong to a place Alex Rodriguez and Gary Sheffield and Randy Johnson can never go. The maturation before our eyes from prospect onward forges an unshakeable bond.
And it should hearten the Mets faithful further to know Wright has some Jeter about him, presence and seriousness, and Reyes has some of Williams, a shyness camouflaging desire. No less an authority on all four players than Willie Randolph acknowledged the comparisons before adding, “I don’t really want to say that because it puts a lot more [expectations] on you.”
But the expectations are there. These are New York players of obvious merit. Wright has a gap-seeking compact swing that already jeopardizes Bernard Gilkey’s team record of 44 doubles (again imagine position players so bad that Bernard Gilkey owns a team record). Reyes’ game is much like that of Atlanta’s Rafael Furcal, laced with skills that show up in every phase. Hitting coach Rick Down marveled, “he is electric” and Randolph, after simply watching Reyes’ cannon arm, said, “it tickles you a little bit when you see young talent like that.”
But the “young” needs to be emphasized. The biggest applause yesterday went to cancer survivor Andres Galarraga, trying to make the team at 43 – the same age Reyes and Wright are combined. It means all kinds of possibilities lay out there for Reyes and Wright, not all of them good. Again, predicting a baseball life is only slightly easier than doing a crossword puzzle in a language you don’t know.
Strawberry, the cautionary tale, was a Met again Sunday at Shea, helping the club set its single-day ticket-sale record at more than 130,000. Maybe those fans will see the beginning of something this year that for the first time ever will end right for the franchise.
—
Neither shortstop Jose Reyes nor third baseman David Wright, has completed a full season for the Mets – Reyes because of injuries, Wright because he was a midseason call-up in 2004. Here’s a look at how their career stats project out to a full 162-game schedule:
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO AVG
Reyes 657 106 186 37 8 9 61 43 9 24 89 .283
Wright 618 96 181 40 2 33 94 14 0 33 94 .293
