The Captain Comes to the Korner
Long Island SABR Book Club No. 2: David Wright and Anthony DiComo on "The Captain: A Memoir"
Last month, our Long Island SABR chapter book club had Joe Buck Zoom in to talk about his book. This month we may have topped it: David Wright and his co-author, Anthony DiComo, joined us for forty minutes to talk about The Captain: A Memoir — and if you ever wondered whether the most private superstar the Mets ever had would open up in a room full of baseball lifers, the answer is yes.
The Book
The Captain opens with the best scene in any Mets memoir, full stop. David Wright is a few hours old, and his father leaves the hospital — not to go home, not to sleep — to buy a plastic glove and a kid-sized Louisville Slugger. Wright still has that bat, mounted in a display his grandmother made for it. "From day one," he told us, "baseball was kind of in my blood."
That scene sets the book's terms. This is not a victory lap. It's the story of a work ethic inherited from a police officer father in Norfolk, Virginia — the dad who hit him ground balls until he blew out his own shoulder, who taught him that if you're not getting better today, somebody else is. It's honest about the collapses and the empty Septembers. And it is unsparing about the comeback years: Wright told us about a ten-minute car ride in Port St. Lucie where his back hurt so badly he called his father nearly in tears, knowing the hamstring was fine but the back was going to cost him another long absence — and how he "lost it" again telling the rehab coordinator.
What makes the book work is the partnership. DiComo covered Wright every day as the Mets beat writer for MLB.com, writing the hard stories during the hard years. For the book, he interviewed seemingly everyone Wright ever knew — family, childhood friends, brothers, teammates — and Wright, who answered every question the same way, win or lose, for fifteen years, finally said the unguarded things. The result is a memoir about resiliency more than glory, and it earns every bit of its emotion.
The Night
Wright set the tone in his first breath, apologizing to the room: going from Joe Buck to Anthony DiComo, he said, was "what a downgrade." (DiComo, for the record, held up just fine.)
Why write the book at all? For his kids. They were too young to watch him play, and Wright wanted them to someday pick it up and learn their dad "actually did some kind of cool things" before he was the corny guy at school drop-off. We learned how DiComo got his start — the great Marty Noble brought the young writer into the clubhouse and introduced him around — and we got the karaoke story: rookie Wright, on his first road trip, belting out "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" in a Montreal karaoke bar, a performance so… memorable that the veterans covered his meals the rest of the year.
And if you think the Captain had his number-retirement speech cold, think again. Wright takes paper notes — paper calendar, too — and just as he was about to speak at Citi Field, it rained. The ink ran, the pages stuck together, the loudspeaker feedback was howling, and the Captain was, in his words, in "full panic mode." Could've fooled us.
The Room Asks
Jeff Cohen asked who the glue guys were in Wright's clubhouses. The answer came fast: Cliff Floyd, Joe McEwing, and Carlos Delgado — Delgado being the one who'd make the dinner reservation for fifteen more and merge the two halves of a clubhouse that, as Wright put it, didn't always speak the same language. DiComo added the perfect Floyd story: as a rookie with Montreal, Marquis Grissom wouldn't let Floyd ride the team bus — rookies take cabs, and pay for them — then quietly repaid every cent at season's end. That's the lesson Floyd carried to Wright.
Mike Tuller asked if Wright is still a prankster. The answer produced the night's best stories, all at the expense of Paul Taglieri, who ran the Mets' Florida operations: his tires removed and hidden around the complex in a scavenger hunt, his car filled with packing peanuts, and — with ownership's blessing — his office door walled up overnight so he couldn't get in the next morning. Wright passed the torch to Jacob deGrom, and offered Taglieri's hard-earned warning to us all: a veteran ballplayer is the worst person to get in a prank war with, because he has "a lot of free time and a lot of resources."
Lyndsey Hogg got the last question. Lyndsey got married at Citi Field, grew up watching Wright, and now teaches third grade — what should she teach her eight-year-olds? The answer was pure Wright, and pure his father: work ethic. Decide what you want, and ask what you're willing to sacrifice for it. Preparation is the part you control; the results aren't. He told us his own third-grade teacher saved the stories he wrote about becoming a professional ballplayer and gave them back to him at his number retirement. Put it out in the universe, then go earn it.
Wright closed with a promise Mets fans will hold him to: his expectations for this team next season are "incredibly high." Big bounce-back year, he says. From the Captain's mouth to the baseball gods' ears.
The full session video is below. Book Club No. 3 is in the works — Joe Buck and David Wright have set the bar incredibly high.
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