As the Mets celebrated their playoff clincher two weeks ago, Daniel Murphy sought out David Wright, his longtime teammate, and wrapped him in a bear hug. He sprayed Champagne and high-fived fans in the stands. He grabbed his 1-year-old son, Noah, and lifted him high in the air.
Murphy looked as if he wanted to savor the moment more than any other player on the team with the possible exception of Wright, the Mets’ captain and senior member of the club. Like Wright, Murphy is a lifelong Met, and like Wright, he has lived through a lot of losing seasons, six straight in all.
But there were differences as well. Unlike Wright, the 30-year-old Murphy had never been in the postseason before. And while Wright has a long-term deal with the Mets, Murphy will be a free agent when the postseason ends, and it appears unlikely the Mets will seek to retain him.
If this is indeed Murphy’s final run as a Met, it seems fitting that he leaves in the heightened drama of a playoff race. Murphy plays the game full speed and headfirst: His steady skill as a hitter stands in counterpoint to the almost reckless abandon he occasionally displays in the field and on the basepaths.
All those elements of Murphy’s game may come into play, for better or worse, as the Mets seek to advance past the Los Angeles Dodgers in their National League division series, which began Friday with a 3-1 Mets victory that included a home run by Murphy. How he handles himself will bear watching and become a part of his lasting legacy in New York, where he arrived without fanfare in August 2008 and immediately began hitting for a higher average than almost everyone else on the team.
Murphy has always had a knack for hitting. In a team meeting in his freshman year at Jacksonville University, he introduced himself by confidently stating: “I’m Daniel Murphy, and I bat third.”
When the Mets drafted him in the 13th round in 2006, he displayed such a smooth swing that upon reaching the major leagues just two years later they began shuffling him from one position to another in an effort to keep his bat in the lineup. Whenever Murphy made a defensive gaffe or a base-running blunder, the Mets essentially shrugged because, as Wright said, Murphy was “programmed to hit a baseball.”
“The guy is just always thinking about baseball, especially hitting,” Wright said. “We’ll go out to dinner and all he wants to talk about is hitting. It’s always something about hitting. You’re like, ‘Murph, Murph — enough! Shut up! Let me enjoy my meal!’”
As an alternative, Murphy seeks out Kevin Long, the Mets’ hitting coach, engaging him in discussions as if they were both instructors. Murphy has developed a personal mantra that would make a college football coach proud: “Win the pitch.” He tells Long when he sees something wrong in a teammate’s swing, and he continually goes to him to break down his own swing in a way that would go over the head of most players.
“Half the stuff he says I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Wright said.
Nevertheless, the result for Murphy is a smooth line-drive approach that never goes away. In seven seasons in Queens, Murphy has batted .288 and earned enough status among his peers to make the National League All-Star team in 2014.
And this season, his walk year, has been one of his finest. His 54 extra-base hits ranked fifth among all second basemen, and, according to FanGraphs, his strikeout percentage (7.1) was the lowest in all of baseball among qualified batters. His swing-and-miss rate (3.9 percent) was the second lowest.
In those instances where he did fall into a funk, he prayed to get himself through it. For if hitting is Murphy’s signature as player, his deepening religious faith in recent years has also come to define him as a person.
That personal transition began after the 2011 season, one in which he batted .320 over 109 games before suffering his second serious knee injury in two years. Despite the physical setbacks he was encountering, Murphy said he felt real satisfaction in how he had played that season, proving for the first time that he was not only a capable everyday player but a borderline elite hitter.
And yet, he said, he also felt empty. Which in turn, led him to emphatically turn to Christianity.
Murphy started reading the Bible daily, taking notes in it as he went, and bringing it to the ballpark. The next offseason, when he proposed to Tori, the woman who is now his wife, he read her Bible passages. He started writing the words “salt” and “light” in his baseball cap, a reference from the Gospel of Matthew.
He began to pray before, during and after games to calm himself and center his focus. As best he could, he tried not to let his obsession with hitting and his desire to do well on the field push aside his faith. “I’m playing for Christ’s glory,” Murphy said recently. “That’s the one I forget a lot. I like to substitute Christ’s glory for Daniel’s glory.’
To the public, understandably focused on Murphy’s at-bats, only so much of this faith is visible. During spring training this year, though, Murphy did create a stir when he said he disagreed with the “lifestyle” of Billy Bean, the former major leaguer who disclosed that he was gay after his playing days and is now baseball’s first ambassador for inclusion.
Murphy was generally respectful toward Bean in his remarks, saying he welcomed his presence in the Mets’ camp, would be open to getting to know him and would have no problem playing with a gay teammate. Still, Murphy’s statements made it clear how much his views were shaped by his religious beliefs.
His teammates, of course, already knew that. Murphy gives a regular speech to the Mets’ minor leaguers about faith and accountability. On road trips, he organizes the Mets’ Bible study sessions in his hotel room. When various Mets players gather for a chapel session, Murphy is a regular participant and asks his teammates that they pray for him to be a better father and husband.
“Pray that I’ll seek holiness, not base hits,” he says.
But even as he relayed that line to a reporter, Murphy still could not help himself from making a joke. “Though,” he said, grinning, “I will take them.”
Murphy will “take them,” because the game has also humbled him in so many ways. There were his disastrous defensive efforts in left field at the start of the 2009 season; the pre-emptive way he was moved off first base to make room for Ike Davis, then a big prospect for the Mets; the serious knee injuries he endured as he tried to master the footwork of a second baseman.
Nothing came easy except the hitting. All the position changes pushed him to his limits physically and mentally. And even his skills as a hitter did not prevent the prolonged slumps that almost every position player encounters.
Now, Murphy said, when he finds hits hard to get, he prays for inner peace. “I’ve had to try to really surrender and recondition myself,” Murphy said, and to remind himself “that my identity isn’t what the scoreboard says.”
“And that’s very difficult. I think everyone can relate to that because we like to find identity in what we do. Whatever work it is, it’s like, ‘I’m good at this, therefore I have value.’ And if we don’t feel like we’re good at it, we don’t feel like we have value. As a baseball player, every night, in big lights, there it is.
“I still struggle with that.”
For Murphy, playing under the big lights may be harder for him than for others, because his mistakes are not typically subtle. When he makes a hurried throw or commits some misadventure on the bases, the average fan takes note. It has, after all, become a part of Murphy’s identity.
“This is meant as a compliment,” Wright said, “but when he makes mistakes, it’s always on the side of trying to make something happen, trying to be aggressive. I think that’s who he is. He’s always looking to make something happen. And a lot of times he does. Those are the types of guys you’d rather have — the types that err on the side of being aggressive.”
In any case, Murphy does not have that much time these days to let those mistakes linger in his mind, not with a pregnant wife and a baby son at home. When Noah was born in spring 2014, Murphy took paternity leave, missed two games and was criticized on sports talk radio for his decision.
He was unapologetic.
His wife, having had a cesarean section, was so physically drained that he needed to help her get to the most basic things.
Most days, Noah now acts as Murphy’s alarm clock, waking him up a few hours before he might have gotten out of bed years ago.
Murphy spends much of his time away from the ballpark playing with his son or helping Tori, who is now pregnant with their second child, with chores.
Now Tori and Noah will be alongside Murphy for as long as the Mets’ playoff run lasts, for what might be their last chapter with the Mets.
“Sometimes I think about it,” Murphy said. But, he added, he will have faith that wherever he ends up is where he was intended to be.
About the Author
