David Wright's Bad Back, The Mets' Bad Luck, And Business As Usual

Somehow Mets phenom Noah Syndergaard struck out 10 Padres on Tuesday night, walked none, and also found time to give up 10 hits and seven runs in just four innings. The Mets, being the Mets—and, more to the point, a team that gave up seven runs in four innings—lost. Thor, as Syndergaard has been nicknamed, getting hammered wasn't the worst thing that happen to the franchise yesterday. It wasn't close.

"We're just not talking about playing baseball," David Wright, the team's injured, menschy cornerstone, told the media before the game. "We're talking about walking and standing and being pain free." He was addressing the newly diagnosed medical condition that might end his career. Or keep him out until next month, it's unclear.

Spinal Stenosis is a narrowing of the spine that, in essence, squeezes everything—nerves, blood vessels, everything—inside the spine. Unsurprisingly, having your nerves and blood vessels constricted on a constant basis is not that comfortable, and can make it difficult to do things like stand or lie down or move without pain, let alone go first to third on a single. It's a disease typically associated with people older than Wright, who's just 32. But Wright is a Met and these things should be accounted for.

I don't mean to be glib about a man's life, it's just that this is the Mets. They are owned and run by a man who hires his son to mistreat employees and drop anonymous burns of his players. They're a team based in the financial capital of the world, and they're quite possibly broke because ownership was caught up in not just a financial scandal, but the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. They're cheap, often stupid, and sometimes sexist. They're the Mets.

And in this mess, you have poor, poor David Wright. Wright is by all accounts a nice and decent person who genuinely enjoys New York and the people who live there, and wants to win. For the first time in a long time, he has a chance at it: the Mets were tied for first place when the first pitch was thrown on Tuesday. Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom have been more dazzling than not, Matt Harvey is back and Lucas Duda is hitting (and we will say nothing, absolutely nothing at all about Michael Cuddyer because why trample on the already injured?) and the Mets suddenly have a young core and young pitching just in time for the very end of David Wright's peak. And then Wright discovers he has a spinal condition threatening his career that most frequently attacks people two decades his senior. If it wasn't so horrible it would be the most Mets thing since the owners decided Bernie could consistently beat the entire stock market all by his lonesome.

Beyond the fact that the Mets have the privilege of paying Wright $100 million between now and 2020, there is little certainty to find, here, beyond the fact that, as Wright himself said several times, "it sucks." If the press conference was called for Wright to discuss his condition, his prognosis, and his ETA, the answers that emerged were Spinal Stenosis, no idea, and no idea. Wright emphasized repeatedly that he hopes to return to the team soon. He also emphasized that he has no idea when that will be possible. He wants to be pain free, not put himself at further risk, and be able to help the team when he gets back. Typical monstrously selfish athlete stuff, there.

The first listing under "treatment" for spinal stenosis on the National Institute of Health's website is "back surgery." Wright may be in line for such a procedure, although he stated in his presser that he'll do everything he can to avoid it. The doctors have told him that a man his age should not have the surgery. The reason behind that was left unsaid, but it's fair to wonder about possible outcomes, up to and including the possibility that surgery would be a step towards solving the problem but make it such that Wright's baseball career would be all but impossible.

For now Wright is staying as positive as he can, something he took great pains to point out at the presser. He's working hard and seeing more doctors than one might think humanly possible. He's hoping to return soon. Rinse, repeat. It was not surprising, or great tabloid copy, but what else is there to say or do? There are only so many answers when there are no real answers.

In the face of such uncertainty and personal danger, in the face of the end of his life as he has always known it and potentially staring down professional destruction, Wright is maybe more fully the Mets in face and in deed than ever before. He's working hard, but it may not matter. He hopes for the best in the future, but that's not up to him.

The man deserves his life to be as healthy and normal as it can be. The Mets are just a baseball franchise. And yet somehow both meet in this burning bummer of a Tomorrowland, made all the sadder for what could and indeed should have been. For Wright, this is tragic. It's tragic for the Mets, too, in large part because it all feels so familiar.