Mets' David Wright hits clutch home run off Phil Hughes to bring team back

The catch seemed destined to be another moment that defined the baseball pecking order in New York. Certainly the way the season has gone, Brett Gardner’s spectacular catch was proof this would be another night when the Yankees and Mets would go their separate ways.

And then Captain America intervened.

In the end, David Wright’s answer to the Gardner catch wasn’t the only reason the Mets pulled out a dramatic 2-1 victory over the Yankees in this first Subway Series game.

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For that matter, Daniel Murphy got the ultimate satisfaction, delivering the winning run with a single in the eighth inning after watching in disbelief as Gardner robbed him of that go-ahead home run two innings earlier.

But make no mistake: the Mets were a dead team walking, fighting so much bad karma already this season, after the Gardner catch. If Wright doesn’t step up and take Phil Hughes deep to lead off the bottom of the seventh, they weren’t winning this game.

“David gave us some life,” was the way Murphy put it.

Chances are it doesn’t change the direction the Mets are heading here in 2013. Wright can’t solve all of their problems. There are far too many outs in the lineup, and if you thought Ike Davis’ game-winning hit on Sunday night would get him started, well, his three strikeouts on Monday night said he is still lost at the plate.

Robert Sabo/New York Daily News

Wright shows why he's the Mets captain in the Subway Series opener.

Still, Wright deserves to savor this one. This was his biggest hit since March when he was dubbed Captain America on Team USA in the World Baseball Classic for his clutch tendencies, his best moment since being named captain of the Mets this spring as well.

At his locker afterward Wright scoffed at talk that this somehow compared to the big moments he experienced as a young Met in 2006, when he thought he was going to the World Series on a night when Endy Chavez made a catch very much like the one Gardner made on this night.

“No, no, no,” Wright said of any such comparisons. “But it’s fun to get a hit in a series like this. It’s an important game right now considering we’ve played as poorly as we have, and it would be a nice way to jump-start us. But you can’t make more of it than it is.”

No, Wright isn’t kidding himself. When he signed that $138 million contract in December, he did so with no illusions about 2013. He did so because Sandy Alderson sold him on a future that begins in 2014 with Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler and other pitching prospects on the way, as well as a promise the GM will have money to spend again.