Capturing David Wright: His 5 best moments as Mets retire No. 5

New York Times

18-07-2025

The last night a New York Met wore No. 5, he waited as long as possible before taking it off.
'To be able to come to work at a place like this, in front of this fan base with this organization, was the honor of a lifetime,' David Wright said then, on the final weekend of September 2018. 'I really don't want to go in there and get changed right now. I want to wear the jersey a little longer.'
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Saturday ensures no one else will get that chance.
The Mets will retire Wright's No. 5 in a pregame ceremony Saturday before their contest with the Cincinnati Reds. Even before the club loosened its standards around retired numbers in 2019, that Wright's No. 5 would adorn the Citi Field façade had been a fait accompli.
To prepare for Saturday's festivities, let's look back at five defining, representative moments of Wright's Mets career.
'For me, there were a few moments my first couple years where it was like, 'Welcome to the big leagues,'' Wright told me back in 2019. 'One of them was facing Randy Johnson for the first time, and certainly one of them was facing Mariano.'
By May 2006, Wright had already suggested he was going to be really good. He'd more than held his own over the final two-plus months as a rookie in 2004, and he'd received down-ballot MVP consideration as a 22-year-old in his first full season in 2005.
But that didn't inspire the utmost respect from opponents, just yet. So in the bottom of the ninth on May 19, 2006, with a runner on second and two outs, Mariano Rivera intentionally walked Carlos Delgado to bring Wright to the plate.
'I remember just trying to calm myself down. Your heartbeat is pumping through your chest. It's the Subway Series, you're a young kid,' he said. 'You're emotional, and times that by 1,000 as a young player facing Mariano Rivera, facing the Yankees.'
Even more than a decade later, Wright lamented missing the 1-1 pitch from Rivera, a cutter left in the middle of the plate that he fouled back. 'You blew it,' he told himself.
Two pitches later, against a better cutter from Rivera, Wright stayed on an even plane and mashed the ball to center. Johnny Damon was playing in to try to throw the runner out at home on a base hit in front of him. As Wright hopped down the first-base line — you can still see it in your mind — the ball outran Damon to the warning track in center.
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'It's certainly a proud moment in my career and one that I remember fairly vividly,' Wright said. 'You want to be considered one of the elite in the game, and in order to do that you have to be productive against the best to ever do it. Certainly he's one of the best to ever do it.'
It was already Wright's third walk-off of the young season. He'd finish his career with nine, not including a memorable one in the World Baseball Classic, where he did some of his best work in the clutch. Wright hit .313 in the highest-leverage at-bats of his career, and he ended up going 3-for-8 off Rivera in his career.
'You probably can't say this about a lot of pitchers in general,' he said. 'I certainly remember all my hits against him.'
Let's just get this out of the way: It's probably not the one most baseball fans are thinking of — the one where Wright is scrambling in Petco Park's shallow left field, drifting too far left and throwing out his bare hand at the last second to snag Brian Giles' bloop. Great play, just not the one that best epitomizes Wright's defense.
No, this one came two months earlier in Seattle. In his book, Wright explained he'd always wanted to rob a home run — something not possible for a third baseman. The next best thing would be going into the stands on a foul ball. So when Raul Ibañez popped one up at Safeco Field in May 2005, Wright saw his chance.
'The distance was perfect for me to jump and make the play,' he wrote. 'As the ball fell into my glove, I felt a split second of triumph, which lasted only until gravity pulled me onto a little ledge where people were resting their drinks. … My leg was black-and-blue for months.'
20 years ago today, David Wright actually jumped into the stands to make a catch.
Video: @NYMhistory
pic.twitter.com/xXHeNeCvdH
— Mike Mayer (@mikemayer22) June 18, 2025
This is the play every Mets fan still brings up whenever they see or hear about Derek Jeter's famous dive into the stands against the Red Sox a year earlier.
It was an early warning about the dangers of going all-out all the time. But that was Wright's DNA, he wrote. 'My philosophy was to dive first, worry about the consequences later.'
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In 2011, that would prove more harmful, when a dive to tag Carlos Lee at third base led to a stress fracture in Wright's back, and the start of a series of trips to the then-disabled list and lifelong management of his back.
Wright's status as a subheading in Mets history, an era unto himself, was solidified when the club formally named him the fourth captain in its history in 2013. Wright joined Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter and John Franco in receiving the honor. And you could draw a line through franchise history from Tom Seaver, who played with Darryl Strawberry, who played with Franco, who played with Wright.
Of course, Wright had embraced an enlarged role for the Mets for a long time. More so than other star players in big markets, Wright had served as a daily spokesman for the team, available to the media after pretty much every game. (Personally, since the Mets were the first major-league team I'd ever covered, it was surprising when I later covered the Yankees and Red Sox that players like Derek Jeter, Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz were available only some of the time.)
Still, naming Wright the team's captain emphasized so much of what he stood for, so much of what had been ingrained in him since he was growing up — to play the game the right way, to carry yourself properly, to earn the respect of those around you.
'You never find that player who has every intangible,' said Tony Tijerina, one of Wright's minor-league managers, in 2018. 'Except for David.'
'In that city, in that market, he basically was the poster boy of, 'You're coming up? Be like this guy,'' Jason Bay told me in 2018. 'Anywhere, that's tough; New York is tougher.'
It remains difficult, nearly a quarter-century after he was first drafted into professional baseball, to find anyone to say anything negative about Wright.
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'Being named captain of the Mets was by far the greatest professional honor I had ever, would ever, or could ever receive,' Wright wrote. 'The title meant my teammates respected me as a person, which was a greater accolade than anything that could go on the back of a baseball card.'
In retrospect, the bitter end to the 2006 postseason for Wright and the Mets only intensified in the years that followed. What had seemed like the opening of a long competitive window was, in fact, the only year Wright and José Reyes (and Carlos Beltrán and Carlos Delgado) would play postseason baseball together. It would take nine agonizing years for the Mets to get back to October.
And by the time they did, Wright's career was in doubt. Early in 2015, he'd been diagnosed with spinal stenosis, a chronic condition that would inevitably end his career earlier than he planned. For much of that summer, as the Mets dallied with contending in the NL East, it was unclear whether Wright would return to the field, and if so, what he could meaningfully provide.
Those doubts persisted even as Wright homered with his first swing back (in Philadelphia, of course), even as the Mets surged into first and clinched the NL East, even after Wright delivered a critical base hit in the first postseason game against the Dodgers. As he stepped to the plate in Game 3 of the World Series at Citi Field, he was batting .171 with a .220 slugging percentage in the postseason. 'What is New York gonna get out of this guy, their captain, David Wright?' Joe Buck asked on Fox.
Wright provided an answer on the second pitch: turning on Yordano Ventura's 96 mph fastball for a no-doubt two-run homer to left. Wright had hit the first BP homer at Citi Field, he'd hit the first regular-season homer at Citi Field, and he hit the first World Series homer at Citi Field. The stadium had never been louder.
'I will never, ever forget that home run,' Wright wrote in his book. 'I will never, ever forget how I felt in that moment. It's something I will hold close to me for the rest of my life.'
The Mets have not excelled at endings in their history. Their best players ended their careers in places like Boston, Cleveland, Oakland and — shudder — the Bronx. They celebrated the closure of their long-time stadium after a cruel season-ending loss. And for a time, for a pretty long time, it looked as if the same fate might befall Wright, his last at-bat coming anticlimactically (and with no one realizing it) in early 2016 against Louis Coleman.
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Indeed, as Wright's rehab through back, neck and shoulder surgeries trudged on, there was even some doubt whether Mets ownership would allow him to suit up ceremonially; there was insurance money at stake, of course.
But on the final Saturday of the 2018 season, Wright and the Mets collaborated on one of the most memorable nights in franchise history. It had been jarring weeks earlier when Wright had divulged publicly what he'd known inside for a while: 'It's debilitating to play baseball.' He would get one last start, one last time to put pinstripes over his orange undershirt, to kick third base, to tug at the bill of his helmet as he stepped into the box.
Wright walked and popped out; you remember the latter because you still despise Peter O'Brien for catching it. In the top of the fifth, he was replaced in the field and cheered for more than three minutes before heading down the dugout steps. After the Mets finally won in 13 innings, he thanked all the fans who stayed 'just to watch a video and hear me mumble some thank yous.'
The night highlighted, as Saturday should as well, Wright's unique place in Mets history — not just as their greatest homegrown position player, but as a player who so thoroughly embraced what it meant to be a New York Met, having grown up a fan in southeast Virginia.
'I live and die with this team,' he said that night. 'When I see the fans take losses hard, when I see the fans smiling from ear to ear after a win, I'm that same way in the clubhouse. I'd like to think that's what's made this connection between the fans and I so strong: I relate to them, they relate to me. We have similar feelings about the New York Mets.'
(Top photo of David Wright's home run in Game 3 of the 2015 World Series: Elsa / Getty Images)