MIAMI — The run was in, the Mets fans among the 32,495 inside Sun Life Stadium were on their feet and making some gleeful baseball noise. And on first base David Wright — two days into his eighth year as a major leaguer, an old soul in a still-young body — started pounding his hands together, once, twice, six times, eight.
Mookie Wilson, the first-base coach, slapped Wright on the shoulders. Across the field, a lot of happy Mets shouted at him, and manager Terry Collins shook his fists at him. The Mets led the Marlins, 4-3, and they would beat the Marlins 6-4, and Collins would kiss the lineup card for his first win as Mets manager, and they would all leave the field feeling a little better than when they had stepped on it.
None was happier than Wright, who has seen so much these past few years, absorbed so much, who has suffered as a championship-caliber team disintegrated around him and has borne the burden of being the unwitting, untitled captain of a baseball Titanic. There was a time when Wright believed games like this one would be the norm for his career. He has learned differently.
“This guy, from first pitch to last he has a focus about him that I haven’t seen in almost any other player I’ve ever been around,” Collins said later. “I haven’t been around many of these guys a long time. But I’ve been around David to know that he cares. He cares so, so much.”
He’s had so little to show for all that attentiveness the past few years. He has watched as the clubhouse around him devolved from one of the elite teams in the National League to one of the epic choke specialists of all time to a battered and bloody mess to, at last, a national punchline, one even a devoted fan like Chris Rock doesn’t mind taking easy shots at on the Letterman show.
It isn’t easy being the face of a franchise that’s the butt of so much derision.
“We believe in here. We have faith,” Wright said. “And that’s really all that matters.”
What matters more, if the Mets hope to play above the grim forecasts, is if Wright has a season in him featuring more games precisely like the one he turned in yesterday. He had three hits and two RBIs and the kind of presence with his bat that he always was when times were good. He led off the fourth inning with an old-school, quintessential Wright home run, a laser shot to right field that cut an early 2-0 Florida lead in half. He added a sharp single in the eighth, but was stranded.
But it was his hit in the 10th that provided the Mets with their first savable snapshot of the season. Frankie Rodriguez, who had been virtually pristine all spring, allowed three hits and a walk in surrendering a 3-2 lead in the ninth, and the Mets were certainly in line to add a gut-shot bookend to the 6-2 hurting Josh Johnson had laid on them Opening Day.
Then Jose Reyes and Angel Pagan led off with singles off Ryan Webb and up stepped Wright. He caught a break early when he sent a lazy floater into foul territory in right field, but the Marlins’ Scott Cousins pulled up and let it drop rather than ceding third base to Reyes. He was trying to do the right thing. If Wright had struck out, it would have been the right thing.
But Wright hit a rocket back up the middle instead, plating Reyes, igniting a three-run inning, fueling his impromptu hand-pounding celebration.
“Looking back,” Cousins said. “I probably should have made the play.”
Wright was too locked in to even notice. It wasn’t until Mookie pointed it out during a pitching change that he even realized he had gotten a mulligan. Not that it would’ve mattered if he’d have duck-hooked the do-over.
“It feels good,” he said. “This team needed a win tonight.”
The Mets are allowed to veer off-script, are entitled to forge their own path, apart from the critics and the skeptics. To do that, they do indeed need wins exactly like this one, and more of them. Wright’s seen a lot of the flip side the past few years. He had one coming.
michael.vaccaro@ny
post.com