CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — Daniel Murphy regarded out over the grass at Fairfield Properties Ballpark, the place the Lengthy Island Geese had been training underneath cloudy skies. “Baseball is a lovely sport,” he mentioned, “and it makes folks do peculiar issues.”
Murphy would know. A 3-time All-Star who performed his final Main League Baseball sport in 2020, he’s trying a comeback with the Geese, whose 126-game season is scheduled to start on Friday with a street sport in North Carolina. Murphy, together with another lengthy pictures, intends to grind it out within the Atlantic League regardless of being 38 and having earned almost $80 million in a 12-season main league profession.
The aim, for Murphy and the opposite acquainted names on the Geese’ roster, is straightforward: Get again to the majors.
The Atlantic League, which has been energetic since 1998, is a spot of optimism and experimentation. The groups are independently owned, however the league is a companion of M.L.B. and has typically served as a testing floor for brand new strategies and concepts, like greater bases, a pitching rubber that was pushed again a foot and so-called robotic umps — a model of M.L.B.’s proposed system of automating the calls of balls and strikes.
However on the coronary heart of the league are its gamers, most of whom couldn’t minimize it on the main league degree or by no means made it there within the first place. That’s the place Murphy stands out. At his peak, he was a star making greater than $108,000 a sport. Within the Atlantic League, the utmost allowable wage is $3,000 a month. The league’s different gamers are dreaming of a profession that Murphy already had.
A stable hitter and second baseman for the majority of his tenure with the Mets, he had a breakout stretch within the staff’s run to the 2015 World Collection. Using a dramatically reworked swing, he set a significant league document by homering in six consecutive playoff video games.
On the heels of his success, he signed a three-year, $37.5 million contract with the Washington Nationals and took his sport to a different degree. Because the face of baseball’s launch angle revolution, he made back-to-back All-Star Video games, led the Nationwide League in doubles twice and completed second to Kris Bryant of the Chicago Cubs for the N.L.’s Most Useful Participant Award in 2016.
After a commerce to the Cubs and two disappointing years with the Colorado Rockies, Murphy, at 35, immediately confronted the second each athlete fears: The sport now not wished him.
Murphy was recognized for prioritizing his household. His determination to take parental go away for the delivery of one in every of his three kids was criticized by followers however led to an invite to the White Home. So it was not shocking that his plans for retirement included taking faculty lessons and spending extra time along with his two sons and his daughter. However baseball didn’t let go.
In his spare time, he discovered himself rewatching Ken Burns’s “Baseball,” a nine-part, 18-hour documentary on the historical past of America’s nationwide pastime. Murphy noticed the sport with contemporary eyes and wished again in.
“I didn’t understand how cool our sport was,” Murphy mentioned on the Geese’ Fan Fest on Saturday. He added, “I feel if you’re in it, and also you’re attempting to be as productive as you may and pretty much as good a teammate as you might be, and a husband and a father, I underestimated simply how cool our sport was and the way cool the blokes had been who performed earlier than me.”
In a league recognized for its improvements, Murphy’s comeback try will include an experiment of his personal, which was impressed by watching his kids play baseball.
“I noticed the way in which my kids moved,” he mentioned. “My swing wasn’t the identical as theirs. They appeared to swing it with their entire physique. I used to be in all probability a bit extra of a hand swinger. It gave the impression to be much like the way in which Ted Williams and Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth swung the bat. They regarded like they performed like kids. So I’m going to attempt to play like a toddler.”
In bringing that new swing to the Geese, Murphy selected a troublesome path again to baseball’s greatest stage. However it’s one which labored for different former M.L.B. stars, together with Dontrelle Willis and Carlos Baerga, who parlayed late-career stints with the Geese into temporary returns to the majors. Total, the Geese have despatched 27 gamers to the large leagues of their 35-year historical past.
This yr, the Geese’ roster includes a typical mix of younger, undrafted gamers; minor leaguers launched earlier than they earned a call-up; and some different main leaguers trying comebacks. Adeiny Hechavarría, who performed for the Mets and the Yankees, is on the roster. So is Rubén Tejada, a teammate of Murphy’s on the 2015 Mets who had his leg damaged by a tough slide from the Dodgers’ Chase Utley in that postseason. Lew Ford, as soon as a stable participant with the Minnesota Twins, is on the staff, as is Al Alburquerque, a former Detroit Tigers reliever who final performed in M.L.B. in 2017 and is greatest recognized for the time a sports activities radio host insisted he didn’t exist.
There was even hypothesis that the previous Mets pitcher Matt Harvey might be part of the squad after his shocking performances for Italy within the World Baseball Basic.
For now, nevertheless, Murphy is the primary attraction.
On Saturday, Tommy Palamara, 13, of Setauket, N.Y., waited eagerly within the stands for Murphy to signal autographs. “I do know him due to the 2015 Mets,” he mentioned, earlier than admitting, “I used to be too younger to recollect it, however I’m instructed I watched him.”
Scott Nitz, a Mets fan and Geese season-ticket holder from West Islip, N.Y., is worked up to cheer on Murphy this season. “He’s been on the prime. However he’s at a degree now the place he’s humble,” Nitz mentioned. “I feel it’s nice that he got here again. I hope somebody picks him up, and I hope it’s quick.”
Geese Supervisor Wally Backman, himself a former second baseman for the Mets, thinks Murphy has pretty much as good an opportunity as any.
“He nonetheless has all of the bat velocity,” Backman mentioned. “I do know the final yr he was with Colorado, he had a nasty hand, and he tried to play by it. I consider simply from watching him play yesterday, with the Nationwide League bringing within the D.H., I feel there’ll be a spot for him.”
And past Murphy’s personal objectives, Backman mentioned his expertise might make an enormous distinction for the Geese’ youthful gamers.
“The older guys and the degrees they’ve been at, they’re not going to let these youthful guys out-hustle them,” Backman mentioned. “We noticed it yesterday when Murphy hit a ball down the right-field line and he needed to leg out a double, after which later he makes a diving play at first base. That rubs off on the younger guys. They’ll bust their butt as a result of they see the work ethic within the older guys.”
Murphy, for his half, is attempting to deal with the journey.
“This can be a brand-new journey,” he mentioned. “I feel I’ve bought a little bit of baseball left in me, and I wish to discover out.”
Glancing at his youthful teammates, he added: “I nonetheless like base hits, although. It’s much more enjoyable if you get hits.”
