It was so easy to take the baton from the kid that hot, humid Wednesday night, let the enthusiasm that poured out of him carry you away.

That was the magic of the young David Wright and, in some ways, it is that same trait that sustains him, still, even as his baseball career has been interrupted so often and so rudely — and sustains us, who believed from the start he could be one of the very best we ever saw.

“I don’t ever want anyone to think I’ve had anything less than an amazing experience playing baseball,” Wright said a few weeks ago. “If you are inclined to feel sorry for me, please don’t. Baseball has given me an incredible life.”

He is an Absent Captain now, at a time when the Mets could surely use his leadership and his voice, when youngsters like Noah Syndergaard would benefit from wisdom and perspective. Personality by proxy is a hard way to steer the ship, no matter how big a hit the post-victory crown may be. And the Mets feel that void every day.

The 34-year-old man who spoke these words in measured tones only vaguely resembles the much skinnier, far-less-bloodied 21-year-old who all but floated to third base on July 21, 2004, who made a couple of defensive gems and went hitless in four at-bats and felt like he was dancing in his dreams the whole time.

“It sent chills down my spine when they announced the starting lineups,” Wright said when his debut was over, when the Mets had beaten the Expos — in case you needed another reminder of just how long ago that was — 5-4, overcoming a game-tying three-run homer from Montreal’s Endy Chavez — in case you needed another.

At his feet sat his first-ever game-worn jersey.

“I think No. 5’s going to be a good number for me,” he said, and the smile was so wide and so pure, it could break your heart now — if not for the fact it was the exact same smile Wright wore when he famously slid across the plate in Washington on Labor Day two seasons ago, rising to punch the air with a triumphant fist.

Already seized by spinal stenosis at that moment, already robbed of so much of his physical gifts, it was clear Wright was planning to enjoy every second of baseball he had left. A few weeks later, in the seventh inning of Game 1 of a playoff series with the Dodgers, we saw the exact same reaction when he turned around a 99-mph fastball from Pedro Baez for a key RBI single. It was Roy Campanella who once said if you want to play baseball, “you’ve gotta have a lot of little boy in you.”

And David Wright seemed to embrace that credo every day of his career.

“I couldn’t possibly be happier for another human being than I am for David Wright,” Mets manager Terry Collins said that night at Dodger Stadium, not caring that his eyes were welling as he said it. “What that kid has been through, none of us will ever understand.”

It was a more subdued Collins who, on the eve of this Opening Day, with Wright once again exiled to the 60-day disabled list, said: “You’re talking about not just one of the greatest Mets in Mets history. You are talking about one of the best players in baseball. It’s hard to see this guy going through what he’s gone through.”

Funny thing: When the Mets won the night of David Wright’s debut, they improved to 47-47 on the year, three games out of first place, and manager Art Howe crowed, “We’re in the thick of it, and David is going to be one of the reasons we stay there.”

They didn’t stay there. They went 24-44, finished 71-91, and Howe got fired mostly thanks to a 2-18 stretch that bridged August and September. Nobody could blame that on Wright, though, who slashed .293/.333/.587 during those 20 dreadful games. And that’s the rub: As time speeds along, as Wright’s career sits frozen in limbo, there has emerged a sense that Wright’s career can be defined thusly: very good player on some disappointing teams.

Don Mattingly for a fresh generation of New York baseball fans, the spirit ever willing and the flesh ever fragile.

“It burns me when I hear that,” Collins said. “This is a guy who wasn’t just the anchor of some terrific teams, he was putting up Hall of Fame years. Look them up.”

It’s true. It is fair to argue that Wright had five legitimate Hall-worthy years — 2005 (.306, 27 HR, 102 RBI), ’06 (.311/26/116), ’07 (.325/30/107), ’08 (.302/33/124) and ’10 (.283/29/103), all but the last for teams still in September pennant races. As recently as 2012 he finished sixth in the NL MVP vote (for a team that lost 87 games), and as recently as ’13 had an OPS of .904 and an OPS+ of 156 (his career high).

He will not go to the Hall of Fame. The first bad break was a Matt Cain fastball to his head late in his first nightmare season, 2009. He kept getting hurt. The injuries became more and more ruinous. He has played 75 regular-season games since the start of the 2015 season, precisely the time when the Mets began to rise again after six lost seasons of purgatory. Maybe David Wright won’t say it. We can say it.

That is unfair.

That is grotesquely unfair.

“If you play this game hard — and David played hard every day — that’s the risk you run sometimes,” said Jay Bruce, a teammate with whom he has yet to play a game. “It stinks for him and it stinks for us and it stinks for New York and it stinks for baseball. Baseball is better when David Wright is playing every day.”

Sports, of course, is the home office for the torturous “What If?”

What if Doc Gooden had never tried that first line of cocaine? What if the Yankees had a game the night of Thursday, Aug. 2, 1979, keeping Thurman Munson from his airplane? What if Wellington Mara had done what his coach, Allie Sherman, begged him to do on draft day 1964 and picked Joe Namath instead of Tucker Frederickson? What if the Knicks had done with the fourth pick of the 1978 NBA draft what the Celtics did two selections later and taken a little-known junior-eligible forward from Indiana State named Larry Bird?

It’s the longest rabbit hole of all.

“I still believe,” Wright said on the day the 2017 baseball season began without him.

He remains a popular figure among Mets fans, and for a hundred good reasons. The next autograph he refuses to sign will be his first.

When seasons past turned sour — whether September or May — he was forever front and center to invite and absorb the scrutiny. He broke up double plays with the ferocity of Chase Utley, if not the malice aforethought. He agreed to stay when others would have bailed — have bailed — and even if he can never possibly be the equal of that seven-year, $138 million contract, few hold it against him.

He broke his finger and hit a home run in Philadelphia his first at-bat back.

He nearly broke his back and hit a home run his first time up after that, too, also at Citizens Bank Park.

The Mets never slapped a gaudy “C” on his chest like they did with Keith Hernandez back in the day, but Wright never needed it. He was every ounce the captain of the Mets, and so you can only wonder what kind of counsel might have been available to Syndergaard the past 10 days if Wright had been hitting cleanup in the batting order rather than soaking in a whirlpool.

“I look forward to a day when I get to write his name in the lineup again,” Collins said. “That’ll be a very good day.”

As good a day as July 21, 2004, the first time the Shea Stadium kids squealed his name and he turned and told them, “I’m not old enough to be called Mr. Wright!”

As good a day as Oct. 26, 2015, the day before he would play his first World Series game, when Wright raced onto the field at Kaufman Stadium and gushed, “You see the New York Mets’ logo, and it’s right next to the World Series logo. And I don’t care who you are, when you see that, all you can do is smile and enjoy the moment.”

Yes. David Wright deserves at least one more day like that, a day when the sun is high in the summer sky and bases are loaded and the pitcher is twitching nervously as he walks to the plate, looking 21 years again and better: feeling 21 again, too.

Hell. We all deserve that day.