NEW YORK — Every time David Wright walks into Citi Field, he thinks of Shannon Forde, the late Mets public relations executive who became like a big sister to Wright almost immediately after the club drafted him as an 18-year-old in 2001. Saturday, as the Mets celebrated the career and the legacy of the former captain, Wright took a moment to celebrate Forde, just as he does every time he returns to New York.

“It feels like yesterday we were at the All-Star Game here laughing and having a good time,” Wright said Saturday afternoon while sitting in a room named in her honor. “I think it just goes to remind everybody — especially me — when you walk in here to enjoy it.”

The injuries that eventually cut the third baseman’s career short began to take hold right before Forde lost a years-long battle with breast cancer. And yet when you talk to those who were close with both of them, they’ll tell you the same thing: You never would have known how difficult those battles were for either of them. Their demeanors never changed, the injuries and illnesses never diminished their love of the game or their love for the Mets.

“He’s a very, very genuine person,” Mets outfielder Brandon Nimmo said of Wright. “You know exactly what you’re getting with him. It’s not like he tries to hide anything, and he’s usually smiling when you’re around him. People generally want to be around people like that. That’s how he was all of the time when I was around. He was joking around, playing jokes, playing pranks and just enjoying life.”

No athlete wants to spend more time in the training room than on the field, especially a leader who is so crucial to their team’s success, but that’s exactly where Wright found himself in the final few years of his career. So much of the discussion about Wright centers around the years that were taken away from him instead of the years he did have, which isn’t what Saturday’s celebration is about.

Saturday’s celebration was about the 1,777 hits he logged in a Mets uniform, the most in franchise history. It was about the doubles, RBIs, walks, extra-bast hits and multi-hit games, all of which still top the Mets’ record books. The Mets are retiring No. 5 and inducting him into the team Hall of Fame because of how he lit up the city and brought excitement, hope and belief to the Mets and their fans only three short years after he was drafted.

Few players connected with the fans the way Wright did, and few players resonate with them the way he still does.

“I view this as just a an incredible, organic relationship between me and my family, the city, the organization and the fan base,” Wright said. “To me, the Mets fan base is a blue-collar, bring-your-lunch-pail, go-to-work type of fan base. That’s how I was raised, certainly, but that’s how I tried to approach the game each day. Coming to the ballpark to provide that blue-collar mentality, and I think that’s why that relationship with the Mets fan base has become so special.”

It wasn’t just fans Wright connected with. He was named the captain because of the way his coaches and teammates gravitated to him and respected him. From the time he was a 21-year-old rookie until he retired at age 35, Wright had a presence about him in the clubhouse and on the field that was tough to define, but impactful when you were around it.

“There was a time my first year here where I was in the locker room at, I don’t know, 1:30-2 o’clock, and David walks through the doors,” said former manager Terry Collins. “I looked around the room and there were 15 other guys in there, and every one of them looked up.

“He’s here. The man’s here.”

Wright gained respect from long-tenured veterans with his work ethic, and once he became a long-tenured veteran, he gained the respect of his younger teammates by showing them what it meant to be a professional. It was a transitional time when a younger generation of players was starting to understand how they could get attention on social media and build their brand before ever having any success on the field.

It’s why Wright somewhat infamously threw away Noah Syndergaard’s lunch during a spring training game, and why he felt the need to stand up for Collins during the waning days of what would ultimately be his last season as a manager. Hit pieces were run on the skipper who guided the Mets through chaos to the World Series, which was the right (or maybe Wright) way to do things in the eyes of the captain.

“He was very confident in who he was and his abilities, so he knew his place as a leader,” Nimmo said. “He had no problem creating some authority there with that.”

Nearly seven years ago, Wright saluted the fans at Citi Field for one last time as the captain, something he called the “greatest honor bestowed on him in his career.” The spinal stenosis in his back would no longer let him swing a bat and there was no way he could make that throw across the diamond. His daughter, Olivia Shea, named for Shea Stadium, threw out the first pitch before his last game, and his family and friends surrounded the field, much as they did Saturday afternoon.

It was a bittersweet moment, to say the least.

“I can’t sit here and tell you I’m OK with it because I’m not,” he said that night. “I’m at peace with the work and the time and the dedication I put into it, but I’m not at peace with the way it ended.”

Finally, Wright has found peace with his career. The Mets’ postseason run in 2006, the World Series in 2015 and his final, painful final at-bat 2018 gave way to days on the softball and soccer fields with his three kids, Olivia, Madison and Brooks, and a family life in Los Angeles with their mother, his wife Molly.

By the time Wright’s No. 5 was lifted to the top of the stadium Saturday afternoon, he had long since learned to appreciate the meaningful moments he had throughout his 14-year Mets career instead of the moments that were taken from him. It’s a gift imparted on him by Forde and everyone else who made his career worthy of the Mets’ Hall of Fame.

“I think it just goes to remind everybody, especially me, when I walk in here to enjoy it,” Wright said. “I think that that’s a great lesson, not just in baseball, but a reminder in life.”

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