Recently, Neil Walker has been the hottest hitter in all of baseball.  Over his last 19 games, Walker is hitting .455/.488/.740 with two doubles, one triple, six homers, and 14 RBI.  He is making last year’s version of Yoenis Cespedes look like Mario Mendoza.  For a Mets team that is struggling to get above .500, let alone be relevant in the Wild Card race, the team can ill afford to lose his bat especially with injuries to players like Asdrubal Cabrera and the aforementioned Cespedes.

And yet, that is exactly what is going to happen.  Neil Walker’s wife is expecting to deliver the couple’s first child – a daughter. Walker keeps his cell phone close waiting for the notice saying, “I’ll pretty much have my phone on me everywhere but second base.  You try to bottle up those three hours any way you can. In between at-bats, I’ll shoot in [the clubhouse] just to check my phone and make sure nothing is going on.” (MLB.com).

Once that happens, Walker is on the next flight out to New York as he intends to take paternity leave.  He is going on paternity leave with full knowledge that his team needs his bat in the lineup, and that his taking time off may have an impact on his production.  Walker joked, “Obviously, when you are swinging the bat well, you want to continue to get as many at-bats as possible, but I certainly am not going to go blaming my newborn if I don’t stay on fire.  I’ll be mentally taking at-bats.”  No matter what happens with Walker’s bat, he is doing the right thing by going to be by his wife’s side.

What is bizarre is that someone actually had to say that.

Back in 2014, when the Mets weren’t expected to go anywhere, Walker’s predecessor, Daniel Murphy, took paternity leave, and he was outright chastised.  Boomer Esiason, a former New York athlete himself, said, “Bottom line, that’s not me.  I wouldn’t do that. Quite frankly, I would have said ‘C-section before the season starts. I need to be at Opening Day. I’m sorry, this is what makes our money, this is how we’re going to live our life, this is going to give my child every opportunity to be a success in life.”  (Boston.com).  Obviously Boomer wasn’t the only one to chastise Murphy, but he was one of the few that had the audacity to challenge both Murphy’s commitment to the team while instructing Murphy’s wife how she should deliver their baby.

Lost in the shuffle was the fact that Murphy’s wife needed to have surgery.  As Murphy would say, “It’s going to be tough for her to get up to New York for a month. I can only speak from my experience — a father seeing his wife — she was completely finished. I mean, she was done. She had surgery and she was wiped. Having me there helped a lot, and vice versa, to take some of the load off. … It felt, for us, like the right decision to make.”  (ESPN.com).

A husband needs to be there for his wife because you never know what will go wrong.  We were reminded of that this year with Jacob deGrom.

Back in April, deGrom found himself on the Bereavement/Family Medical Emergency List as his newborn son had difficulty breathing with apnea.  The deGrom family went through the harrowing process of not knowing if their child was healthy.  At the time, deGrom was home to not only be there for his wife emotionally, but also to spend time with his son Jaxon.  Fortunately, deGrom’s son would be alright allowing him to put in the work he needed to for the baseball season.

Fortunately, Murphy’s wife and deGrom’s son were ultimately okay.  During that time, Murphy and deGrom got to spend time with their families that desperately needed them home.  But that’s not the only reason for the paternity leave.

The birth of your child is the greatest experience of your life.  It certainly was for me.  In fact, each day with my son is better than the next.  No father should be robbed of that experience.  Not me, not you, and not Neil Walker.

Furthermore, your wife needs you.  There are no words to describe what your wife goes through not just during pregnancy, but also during labor.  Her reward after that grueling experience?  She has to feed a baby every two hours followed by burping and changing the baby.  By the way, she also has to find some time to sleep.  She needs all the help she can get, even if it is just a day or two with her husband.

Walker making the decision to remove himself from the lineup at a time the Mets need him most does not make him a bad teammate, it makes him a good husband and father.  Walker’s place is with his family.  It is his teammates job to pick him up during his absence the way Walker picked them up in April and over the course of August.