MLB

Wright, Collins show Mets willing to fight

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The first step on the long road back to relevance was a simple one, a critical one: The Mets needed to sell themselves to their own. They needed to convince their own fans they were worth the time, worth the effort, before determining if they’re also worth the investment of soul and checkbook.

Twenty wins in 36 games is one way to get there. But what we saw last night might have provided the most eloquent explanation of just how far they’ve come, and just why they seem to have passed that first crucial test.

On a lost night, in the middle of absorbing an 8-0 thrashing from Zack Greinke and the Brewers, a night that could easily have passed into the books with neither whisper nor whimper, there was David Wright in the dugout, slamming his helmet onto a shelf, growling at manager Terry Collins after Collins pulled him from the game, pointing his index finger at the manager, storming away.

And there was Collins a few minutes later, head bowed, listening intently to Wright, letting him vent. And, later on, in a voice filled with just enough emotion that it trembled ever so slightly, saying, “I got news for you. In this game, there are unwritten rules. And one of those is: You hit my guy, I’m hitting your guy. They’re not hitting my guy tonight.”

Collins thought the Brewers might interpret D.J. Carrasco’s plunking of Ryan Braun in the seventh inning as intentional. And he wasn’t about to let the Brewers retaliate in kind, not in an 8-0 game.

Whether it was intentional or not isn’t important. Neither is the transaction of removing Wright from the game. This was: Both Collins and Wright care enough about this team and this season as it approaches the quarter pole that they were willing to fill the dugout with noise and rancor, even for a lost cause. They are a fine match, a manager who cares and a player who cares even more.

You want to win fans back, want to get to a point where you’re drawing better than 22,000 for a rainy night in the middle of May? Start here. Start with giving a damn, even on a night when the most ardent could be forgiven for seeking out the Pacers-Heat game, or “NCIS.” Wright told Collins if anyone was going to get hit, it should be him.

“My thinking is, Ryan gets hit so then if I get up and get hit everything’s settled,” Wright said, and that’s a raw, instinctive strain of leadership that Collins, rightly, needed to redirect. Both men have enormous heart (and Wright, remember, still has a broken finger). And in this case, both hearts were in the right place.

A year ago, on the last day of the season, when everyone was consumed with Jose Reyes’ early escape, Wright had approached Collins, privately, and made him a quiet guarantee.

“It will get better here,” Wright said.

It has. There is no guarantee the Mets will play .556 baseball the rest of the way. They are still a thin team, tip-toeing a razor-thin margin for error. The fast start doesn’t obscure the fact they are still building toward 2013 and beyond. But they’ve gotten one thing right already: They care. They play hard. They give a damn. Every night.

Terry Collins demands nothing less. David Wright, too. Terrific tandem. A good place to start.