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Jeff Pearlman with a lovely profile of former long-haul trucker Mookie Wilson, who once, you might have heard, took the last swing of a rather exciting baseball game.
"It gets to the point that you're talking about the story of the event, and not the event itself," he says. "It's so monotonous, it's so redundant. I know I have to tell the story, and I know people I'm telling it to have already heard me tell the story. It never changes. I'm trapped."
And yet, within this sentiment lies the simple beauty of William Hayward Wilson. For as much as he has tired of repeating the same tale ad nauseam, Wilson, 55 years old, never stops repeating the same tale ad nauseam.
"We've been together for more than 30 years, and Mookie's never turned down a request for an interview or shied away from an autograph," says Jay Horwitz, the team's veteran vice president of media relations. "He is probably the nicest, most decent man I've ever met."
Which explains why Wilson, an excellent-but-not-amazing ballplayer whose 12-year career, from 1980 to '91, compares most similarly (according to the Baseball Reference website) to Terry Puhl and Al Bumbry, has become an eternal Met; he is a symbol not merely of past glory, but of everything good and righteous about an oft-bumbling franchise.
Wilson's smile is a rainbow. His laugh is uplifting. His brown eyes, as wide as the fullest of moons, gaze intently. He looks directly toward you when he talks and slaps you on the back before walking away. |
Makes me glad that in my one encounter with No. 1 I didn't ask, "About that ground ball..."
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