Northampton baseball's Jay Wright stars in right field and bats from the leadoff spot in the line-up despite playing with only one hand. While many might see that as a limitation, Wright lets his play do the talking. Watch video
NORTHAMPTON -- As the Northampton varsity baseball team warms up during an April practice, the team breaks up into groups of two or three to loosen their arms. One player, senior Jay Wright, finds himself in a group of three.
As Wright receives a throw, he catches it in his glove on his right hand. He then does something different from any other player on the team. Wright quickly tucks his glove under his left arm with the opening facing out, plucks the ball from his mitt and slings it back to his partner.
The entire process is so smooth and lightning quick that it can be easy to miss the first time around.
The speed of the action is remarkable to the average observer because Wright was born without most of his left forearm.
Don’t let your eyesight fool you though: Jay Wright has two hands. Wright, Northampton’s starting right fielder and leadoff batter, barely even seems to notice his birth defect on the field.
“I have two hands. That’s basically it. I go out, do what I have to do and come off the field like everybody else,” Wright said.
Wright’s attitude has propelled him throughout his sports career as a varsity baseball and soccer player, because he refuses to feel sorry for himself or make excuses. Instead, he learned early on that with persistent practice, his performance could outshine his perceived limitation.
“He’s hard-working, he’s enthusiastic. He’s the kind of kid that really the fact that he has one hand, it’s not his defining characteristic. We think of him like everybody else on the team,” senior co-captain and starting shortstop Zachary Goodwin-Boyd said. “We kind of forget almost that he has one hand. It’s not something we think about. He’s just such a good player that it’s easy to look past that.”
Wright has been impressing teammates, coaches and spectators alike with is ability to let his play do the talking. Through nine games, he has accumulated five hits, five runs batted in and one home-run. Northampton head coach Mark Baldwin remembers seeing Wright play in the Cal Ripken league when he was a fifth- or sixth-grader, and even then knew that Wright had the potential to be a high school varsity player.
“A lot of younger kids can’t catch fly balls very well, and he’s the kid who could. [When] we were doing fly ball drills, he could run and shag it,” Baldwin said. “We kind of noticed after the fact that, ‘Oh, he only has one arm.’ But that wasn’t the first thing that jumped out. The first thing that jumped out is that that kid’s really good.”
Wright has been with the varsity team in a reserve role the past three seasons. He started several games in both his sophomore and junior campaigns, but mostly came in as a defensive replacement. Wright played in some part of almost every game last year, but this year has solidified his place in the line-up as the team's starting right fielder, Baldwin said.
“He’s a tremendous athlete,” Baldwin said. “He’s the fastest player on the team, he has great body control, great strength and offensively he’s got an unbelievable eye, so he gets on base a lot.”
Goodwin-Boyd called his teammate “one of the best fielders in the area,” and mentioned that Wright rarely seems to make a mistake in the field. Despite his high level of play, Wright still experienced the inevitable taunts and jibes growing up on the diamond.
04.18.13 -- Northampton -- MassLive.com photo by Joe Brown -- Senior Northampton starting right fielder and leadoff batter Jay Wright practices batting at baseball practice.
It makes it easier to get past things with the way Wright can flat out play ball. In the team’s April 2 game against Holyoke at home, Wright lined a two-run home run, a laser over the new outfield fences at Northampton, making him the first person to do so and tying the game at the time.
“Right before I stepped up to the plate, I said to my Coach Dylan Rickles, ‘I hope he [the pitcher] gives me that pitch again,’ a low, inside pitch. And when he did, I just turned on it. I didn’t think I was going to hit it out. I thought I [hit] a nice line drive into right field, easy base hit…I looked up and over the fence it went. I was ecstatic. I didn’t even know how to react.”
Northampton (4-5) would go on to win, 7-6, as Wright also scored the winning run in the sixth inning.
Wright plans to continue his soccer and baseball careers at Holyoke Community College, where he wants to take classes before transferring to a four-year college. He believes wholeheartedly in his athletic abilities, and draws a special source of inspiration from a signed photo from retired one-handed former New York Yankees and California Angels pitcher Jim Abbott, who pitched a no-hitter on Sept. 4, 1993 and won 87 games at the major league level.
“When I was young, my parents had emailed him and for my birthday he sent me an autographed picture,” Wright said. “I still have that to this day, [and] look at it everyday.”
Like Abbott, he is not given special attention, nor does he want it. Wright is not on the diamond to make excuses. He is just there to play ball.
“I can do anything I put my mind to,” the senior with two hands said.