So here I am reading up on Monday’s happenings at Mets Camp, when I come across some comments David Wright made about todays first full team workout and about Terry Collins specifically.
Immediately, a sense of deja vu came over me… I know I’ve read this comment before and I knew it wasn’t that long ago either.
Two things were very clear to me; I knew that it wasn’t Wright who said it, and I also knew that the original comment wasn’t about Terry Collins. But somehow I was sure the two comments were connected.
What a perdicament…
A half-hour later… Thank you Google, and thank you Adam Rubin of ESPN New York.
David Wright on Terry Collins – February 21, 2011:
“When he pulls you aside one-on-one, it’s just a different intensity or a different volume. He’s just that excited about baseball and that excited about this season that he gets all fired up and it’s like a snowball. He starts out kind of at a normal voice and it picks up a few decibels, and then a few more. By the end of it he’s yelling and screaming and sweating and red in the face. It makes it fun. Those are the type of guys you want to go out and run through a wall for.”
Dan Uggla on Wally Backman – November 6, 2010
“Well, obviously he’s very passionate with protecting his players. I’ll tell you what, if you play for Wally Backman, you’re going to be able to run through a brick wall, because we have the same emotions toward him as he has toward us. I mean, I would have run through a brick wall for him. Everybody is playing hard — I think playing above their ability — when they play for a guy like that.”
Two very intense players with two very similar perceptions about two very intense managers.
How many times do you remember any player saying that they wanted to run through a wall for Jerry Manuel and Willie Randolph?
Don’t say Jason Bay!
