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January 8, 2006 -- CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Elisa Wright knew this day was coming. Her oldest son had signed a 12-month lease on an apartment in Manhattan. Now that David Wright was a rising star with the Mets; she thought the days of him living at home in the offseason were about to end.
She and her husband Rhon, a captain in the Norfolk police department, are proud parents of four handsome and energetic boys, and she was sure David would be spreading his wings. Life in their beautiful brick colonial was about to change.
Not so fast.
"He's spending as much time home as ever; it's just like it's always been," Elisa says with a smile. "They all pound on each other and play together."
Elisa, 47, and Rhon, 46, have made a wonderful nest for their family on this quiet cul-de-sac.
"I've got everything I need at home; why would I leave?" says Wright, who makes occasional visits to New York during the winter. "Maybe I'll get a condo down here, but I haven't found the right place."
Spend a day with him, meet his family, his friends and his extended family of baseball and life coaches and you quickly understand why David Wright is the most mature 23-year-old athlete to come through New York since Derek Jeter.
His is a Wonderful Life here in this family-first area where David plays the role of Big Brother to the max. He beats on his brothers and they beat on him. He drops them off at basketball practice in his Land Rover or takes them out with him to go bowling - on Christmas night, and yes, his date did come along.
His prized Christmas gift? An electronic dartboard. It's all about competition with these Wright Brothers. "They even compete when they eat," Rhon says.
Sure, Big Brother is a major league star, but he's one of four when he's home. He grew up sharing a bedroom and sleeping in a bunk bed until he became a professional ballplayer. David has earned the perk of graduating to the spare bedroom these days.
Daniel, 14, a football star, can whip David in video games. "He should be the best; he plays all day long," cracks Matt, 17, who is headed to Florida Southern to play baseball. Matt's also a point guard, who schools David one-on-one. The backyard games are legendary for their physical nature.
All the hits aren't on the court. As David gives a tour of the upstairs, he crosses paths with Matt and instinctively gives him a punch to the chest. Matt merely "dusts off" the brother-blow with his right hand as the tour continues.
Matt got David good in a recent paintball battle, anyway. "It wasn't good enough to shoot me," David explains, "he had to go and shoot my cell phone."
"You should see the welts they come home with," Elisa says. The second-oldest is Stephen, 20, a junior at Virginia Tech, majoring in engineering. "He beats me with his brains," David says with a knowing smile. On this weekend, Stephen is in New York, staying at David's apartment.
David makes sure that it is Daniel's job to fetch water and soda on a whim and make snacks on the George Foreman Grill for each of the brothers. "Cliff taught me well," Wright says, referring to Mets left fielder Cliff Floyd.
The past year and a half, Wright has paid his extended rookie dues, essentially being Floyd's valet. Daniel loves sushi, so David pays him back for his hard work by taking him out to his favorite sushi restaurant or wherever he needs to go.
Make no mistake, the adjustment of coming home this offseason was tough at first - not on David, but on his six-month-old boxer, aptly named Homer.
Homer, who loves to chase his tail, lived with Wright in Manhattan on the 36th floor of his apartment. When Homer came "home" with David, he had one little problem. He had never really seen grass. "It was difficult to get him to walk on grass, but he's adapted," Rhon says.
The area is a baseball hotbed, thanks to the coaching efforts of people like Gary Lavelle, who pitched 13 years in the majors, Towney Townsend, Alan Erbe and many others.
There are nine young major leaguers in the immediate vicinity, all friends of Wright's. They include third baseman Mike Cuddyer of the Twins, Tampa Bay's B.J. Upton, the No. 2 pick of the 2002 draft, his brother Justin, the No. 1 overall pick this past year, who signed with the Diamondbacks this past week, and Ryan Zimmerman, third baseman of the Nationals, who was a first-round pick this past season out of Virginia.
They all work out at Body Structures, a friendly local gym, under the watchful eye of Piney Reyes, 55. They all speak glowingly of Wright. "David is an amazing player," Zimmerman says. All except B.J. "I've got nothing good to say about him," cracks Upton. Their friendship is built on the closest of bonds, breaking chops.
Upton, like Wright, lives at home with his parents, just two minutes from Wright. He is a notorious late sleeper. As soon as David sees B.J. on this morning at Cuddyer's hitting camp, he makes a joke about B.J. being up before noon and follows with a jab about Upton's fielding problems.
The shortstop, who was with the Devil Rays in 2004 at the tender age of 19, played this past season at Triple-A Durham and made a stunning 53 errors. Wright, who has his own fielding issues, playfully asks Upton if he "follows" his throws to first with his feet, a baseball technique.
Upton, knowing where the conversation is going, heads Wright off at the bag, saying, "If I followed with my feet, I'd be up in the stands."
If you're looking for dirt on Wright, you're not going to find it here, although Rhon admits there was that time at Hickory High when David got in big trouble. He threw a hamburger during a food fight.
"The great thing about David," explains Cuddyer, who is only three years older but is Wright's mentor, "is that he would never do anything to hurt his image. I don't care what anybody says, we are role models and David knows it's important to be a good role model." Wright has already established the David Wright Foundation and has big plans for the foundation.
Wright ends the morning and afternoon sessions of the camp at Greenbrier Christian Academy with a speech about being responsible for one's actions and the value of hard work, each time getting a warm round of applause from the students and parents. It was not too long ago he was sitting there just like them. He then signs every autograph, as does Upton.
Notes Rhon, "David understood early the importance of a good education and hard work and I think that carries into the ballfield. He may not be the most athletic, but he works as hard as he possibly can to get better."
This kind of hard work: When darkness would fall on the "country ballfields," as they used to call them down here, David would position his car near the field with high beams on to take extra grounders and play pepper, a trick he learned from Cuddyer.
David Wright would run out of daylight, but not the desire to be the best he could be. When Rhon coached him one year in Little League, he decided to move his star shortstop to the outfield, because David was moving up a level.
"He let me know in no uncertain terms he was not happy about it," Rhon says. Twelve years later, David remains miffed about the position switch. "That's why," he tells his dad, "you were not the coach the next year ... He was fired because of it and banned from all Tidewater-area coaching for that move."
Wright is as comfortable in the Big Apple as he is at home. "He absolutely loves New York," notes Rhon, whose prized possession is an autographed baseball from Jerry Seinfeld. "When he was being recruited to play college ball, he chose Georgia Tech because it was right in the middle of Atlanta."
"I want to be a Met my whole career," Wright says.
Towney Townsend was a top draft pick of the Red Sox in the '70s and is the coach who started AAU baseball in the area. He has an old video of a 61/2-year-old chubby kid taking 20 swings, missing the ball and knocking down the batting tee every time. And each time the youngster smiles.
Yes, that's David Wright. The same player who batted .306 last season with 102 RBIs, 42 doubles and 27 home runs, the first Met to ever knock in 100 runs in the season following his rookie year.
"David has what I call the sixth tool, the ability to forget something bad instantly and move on," Townsend says. Townsend knows bad. He is fighting throat cancer for the second time and Wright and his fellow area stars recently put together a fundraiser to help offset the costs of the initial 18-hour surgery and long recovery.
Townsend, 53, has never smoked, drank alcohol or used tobacco, yet he is part of the "one percent" from that group who is stricken with throat cancer. "I've caught a bad hop, but I've knocked it down in front of me, barehanded it and I'm set to throw," Townsend says. "I've been blessed. I've gotten to know how people feel about me before I die.
"I'm telling you, when it's all said and done," Townsend adds, "David will be one of the greatest players to ever play the game." With people like that around Wright, you can see why he is the player and person he is today.
Last week, the Norfolk police department had its holiday party. "David was gracious enough to swing by," says Rhon, who has been a policeman for nearly a quarter of a century, steadily moving up the ranks, including spending time as a K-9 officer. "David signed every autograph and posed for every picture," Rhon says. "I've always told him, it doesn't that take that long to make people happy. David has always been good about that."
Rhon smiles and adds, "It's funny, my chief, recently introduced me as David Wright's dad. I half-jokingly told him, 'You know I've got almost 25 years in the department, I've done some pretty good things on my own, but if you want to introduce me to the city council or anybody else as David Wright's dad, that's fine, you are the chief.' It's all good."
Yes it is. David Wright is home - and never alone.
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