Baseball’s ‘Peculiar’ Pull Draws in a Former Star

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — Daniel Murphy seemed out over the grass at Fairfield Properties Ballpark, the place the Long Island Ducks have been training beneath cloudy skies. “Baseball is a beautiful game,” he mentioned, “and it makes people do peculiar things.”

Murphy would know. A 3-time All-Star who performed his final Major League Baseball sport in 2020, he’s trying a comeback with the Ducks, whose 126-game season is scheduled to start on Friday with a street sport in North Carolina. Murphy, together with another lengthy photographs, intends to grind it out within the Atlantic League regardless of being 38 and having earned practically $80 million in a 12-season main league profession.

The aim, for Murphy and the opposite acquainted names on the Ducks’ roster, is straightforward: Get again to the majors.

The Atlantic League, which has been lively since 1998, is a spot of optimism and experimentation. The groups are independently owned, however the league is a accomplice of M.L.B. and has usually served as a testing floor for brand spanking 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.

But on the coronary heart of the league are its gamers, most of whom couldn’t reduce it on the main league degree or by no means made it there within the first place. That is the place Murphy stands out. At his peak, he was a star making greater than $108,000 a sport. In 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 strong hitter and second baseman for the majority of his tenure with the Mets, he had a breakout stretch within the crew’s run to the 2015 World Series. Utilizing a dramatically reworked swing, he set a serious league file 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. As the face of baseball’s launch angle revolution, he made back-to-back All-Star Games, led the National League in doubles twice and completed second to Kris Bryant of the Chicago Cubs for the N.L.’s Most Valuable Player Award in 2016.

After a commerce to the Cubs and two disappointing years with the Colorado Rockies, Murphy, at 35, abruptly confronted the second each athlete fears: The sport now not wished him.

Murphy was identified for prioritizing his household. His choice to take parental depart for the start of considered one of his three youngsters was criticized by followers however led to an invite to the White House. So it was not shocking that his plans for retirement included taking school lessons and spending extra time together with his two sons and his daughter. But 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 recent eyes and wished again in.

“I didn’t realize how cool our game was,” Murphy mentioned on the Ducks’ Fan Fest on Saturday. He added, “I think when you’re in it, and you’re trying to be as productive as you can and as good a teammate as you can be, and a husband and a father, I underestimated just how cool our game was and how cool the guys were who played before me.”

In a league identified for its improvements, Murphy’s comeback try will include an experiment of his personal, which was impressed by watching his youngsters play baseball.

“I observed the way my children moved,” he mentioned. “My swing wasn’t the same as theirs. They seemed to swing it with their whole body. I was probably a bit more of a hand swinger. It seemed to be similar to the way Ted Williams and Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth swung the bat. They looked like they played like children. So I’m going to try to play like a child.”

In bringing that new swing to the Ducks, Murphy selected a tough path again to baseball’s greatest stage. But 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 Ducks into transient returns to the majors. Overall, the Ducks have despatched 27 gamers to the massive leagues of their 35-year historical past.

This yr, the Ducks’ roster contains 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 strong participant with the Minnesota Twins, is on the crew, as is Al Alburquerque, a former Detroit Tigers reliever who final performed in M.L.B. in 2017 and is finest identified 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 a part of the squad after his shocking performances for Italy within the World Baseball Classic.

For now, nonetheless, 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 know him because of the 2015 Mets,” he mentioned, earlier than admitting, “I was too young to remember it, but I’m told I watched him.”

Scott Nitz, a Mets fan and Ducks season-ticket holder from West Islip, N.Y., is worked up to cheer on Murphy this season. “He’s been at the top. But he’s at a level now where he’s humble,” Nitz mentioned. “I think it’s great that he came back. I hope someone picks him up, and I hope it’s fast.”

Ducks Manager Wally Backman, himself a former second baseman for the Mets, thinks Murphy has pretty much as good an opportunity as any.

“He still has all the bat speed,” Backman mentioned. “I know the last year he was with Colorado, he had a bad hand, and he tried to play through it. I believe just from watching him play yesterday, with the National League bringing in the D.H., I think there’ll be a spot for him.”

And past Murphy’s personal objectives, Backman mentioned his expertise might make an enormous distinction for the Ducks’ youthful gamers.

“The older guys and the levels they’ve been at, they’re not going to let those younger guys out-hustle them,” Backman mentioned. “We saw it yesterday when Murphy hit a ball down the right-field line and he had to leg out a double, and then later he makes a diving play at first base. That rubs off on the young guys. They’ll bust their butt because they see the work ethic in the older guys.”

Murphy, for his half, is making an attempt to give attention to the journey.

“This is a brand-new adventure,” he mentioned. “I think I’ve got a bit of baseball left in me, and I want to find out.”

Glancing at his youthful teammates, he added: “I still like base hits, though. It’s a lot more fun when you get hits.”