NEW YORK -- A dozen seasons. More than 1,500 games. Nearly 7,000 trips to home plate. All of them in one uniform, this uniform. All of them leading David Wright to this game, this night, this magical evening.
The story of his long baseball journey had checked nearly every box. All-Star Games? Been there. Gold Gloves? Done that. Home Run Derbies ... 30-homer seasons ... top-five MVP seasons ... baseball in October? He'd done it all.
But he'd never done this.
Before Friday night arrived at Citi Field, 1,779 different players had come to bat in a World Series game at least once in their home park. David Wright wasn't one of them.
Until the clock ticked toward 8:30 on the last Friday in October. Until he found himself staring into the eyes of Yordano Ventura from a batter's box he'd occupied so many times. Bat wagging. Body rocking. A packed ballpark shaking. His long wait, for this moment, finally at an end.
A 96 mph flameball came vrooming his way. He got that front foot down. He rolled that top hand. Bat met baseball. And all of a sudden, a Hollywood moment busted out in a Broadway kind of town.
The second the baseball began sailing through the Flushing sky, toward the seats beyond the Party City Deck in left-center field, you knew what you were watching, but you still had to make yourself believe it.
After 12 seasons of waiting for this pitch, this swing, the face of the New York Mets had just launched a home run in the first World Series home-field at-bat of his life. A home run to give his team a lead in a game it had to win. A home run he was never going to forget.
Whew. Who writes these scripts?
"I've said it before: This is what you dream about as a kid," Wright would find himself saying three hours later, after the Mets had brought this World Series back to life with a 9-3 Game 3 blowout of the Kansas City Royals. "You're thinking about playing in a World Series game, and on top of that being able to contribute with a few RBIs and a home run.
"Running around the bases, it's just like floating. You can't describe the excitement of hitting the home run, crossing home plate, high-fiving your teammates and looking up and seeing people going absolutely nuts. It's one of those memories, at least for me, that will stick with me for the rest of my life."
And there would be more memories to come. Five innings later came another huge swing of the bat. Another hit, off another fastball traveling at supersonic speed, to drive in two more runs, to turn this from a 6-3 game into an 8-3 game, to make it feel safe for the Citi Field party to officially begin.
So what we had here was the kind of night that rarely happens in actual life, even to people like this. We've done the math. We've pored through the World Series history books. And we now know the answer to this question:
How many other players had ever waited 12 seasons to play in a World Series game in their home park and then had a game like this -- four RBIs and a homer?
ESPN Stats & Information whiz Doug Kern could find only one: Ted Kluszewski, who did it for the Chicago White Sox in Game 1 of the 1959 World Series, in old Comiskey Park. But wait. Here's the very big difference between Wright and Kluszewski:
Like Wright, Kluszewski had played more than a decade for the team that originally signed and developed him before he finally reached the World Series. But that team was the Cincinnati Reds, not the White Sox. And it wasn't until he was playing for his third team that Kluszewski got to live this dream.
So it couldn't possibly mean what this night meant to a man who has gotten more hits, and driven in more runs, than any player who has ever worn the uniform of the New York Mets. And his teammates grasped the meaning of it just as powerfully as Wright did -- especially that first-inning home run that felt like something Robert Redford might have done with the "Wonder Boy" bat in "The Natural."
"That was just really cool, man," reliever Tyler Clippard said. "You know, this game is funny, how it works out sometimes and how the moment finds certain guys. And you couldn't really script it any better -- David coming up in that spot and hitting that home run, with all he's done for this organization. For him to get his first AB in a World Series and hit that home run, that's kind of storybook stuff."
But this wasn't just about the moment. It was about the magnitude of the moment. The Royals had already won two games in Kansas City and then marched into this ballpark, scored in the top of the first and took a quick 1-0 lead. And you could feel the biggest crowd in Citi Field history stir with unease.
So to watch Wright answer with that two-run homer that fast, six pitches into Ventura's night, it felt like more than just the momentum of one game was changing.
"We were all just jumping up and down, pumped, happy for him, happy for us," said a guy who has known Wright since he was 12 years old, Michael Cuddyer. "It was a really cool sight, because you know that to these fans, he's one of them. You know that. And you could see that. And you could feel that. So I think we were able to feed off that energy."
Think of all the players who have played baseball in New York. Think of all the stars who have played baseball in New York. Only one of them, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, played at least a dozen seasons, all for one New York team, before playing in a World Series game for the first time. That was Roy White, for the 1976 Yankees. But he didn't have a night like this in his World Series debut.
And over the past 30 years, Elias reports, only five other players have played more than 1,500 games for only one team before playing in a Series game for that team. You've heard of them: Jim Rice (Red Sox), Jeff Bagwell (Astros), Craig Biggio (Astros), Todd Helton (Rockies) and Michael Young (Rangers). But none of them had a night like this in their World Series debuts, either.
So what David Wright did, when his moment arrived at last, pretty much stands alone.
"He's David Wright for a reason," Clippard said. "And the moment is never too big for him. And like I said before, it's funny how baseball works, and things work out that way, and storybook happens. Storybook stuff just happens to those types of players, it seems like."
But the back story to this fairy tale isn't all sunshine and violins. We can't ever forget this is a man dealing with spinal stenosis, a back condition that keeps Wright company every minute of every day and always will, for the rest of his life.
So no one on the outside sees what he goes through daily just to make it onto a baseball field, let alone live out one of these October fairy tales. But the men on the inside see it. And get it. And appreciate it.
"Just like today," his manager Terry Collins said. "The game is at 8 o'clock tonight and I'm here at 11:15. (At) 11:45, David walks in, just to get himself ready. And it's stretching and part of the rehab that they loosen up his back. But he just knows he's got to do it. So he's in here and he does it."
But the man putting in that work doesn't want our sympathy, even though he's wearing an ice pack on his back as he's answering these questions.
"It's just been part of the routine to have to go through, the things that I have do to get my back ready on a daily basis," Wright said. "It takes extra time, but nobody is complaining. It's the World Series. You've got to do what you've got to do."
And what the Mets have to do right now is win. Win at least one more time this weekend to get this World Series back to Kansas City next week. And win at least three more times to ride in their first parade since 1986.
But what they had to do most, and what they had to do first, was win Friday night -- because no team has ever gone down, three games to none, in a World Series and come back to win it. So they needed all the contributions they got on this night, from Curtis Granderson (two hits, a homer, three runs scored), from Noah Syndergaard (only one hit given up to the last 16 hitters he faced), from a bullpen that finished what Syndergaard started with three perfect innings.
All of that happened. All of that mattered. But the best script of the night revolved around a man who had played more games for this franchise than any of them, a man who hadn't even driven in four runs in a regular-season game since April 12, 2013. How could it not?
"What David did, that was awesome," Cuddyer said. "We need him. We need him to win. And he showed tonight why."
A dozen seasons. More than 1,500 games. Nearly 7,000 trips to home plate. They comprise the long first act of the Life and October Times of David Wright. But now comes this act. The biggest act of all. And after what unfolded at Citi Field on this indelible Friday evening, we can't wait to see how where that act leads him.
"Hopefully, it's a storybook ending," Cuddyer said, "for him and for all of us."