This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo's Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The night before Seth Lugo’s son, James, underwent heart surgery, the 19-month-old was sitting in a hospital bed, watching football on television and bouncing a ball with his father -- “just having the time of his life,” as Lugo recalled it. A day later, doctors cut open James’ heart to repair two holes in it.

As Lugo and his wife, Amanda, awaited the results, sitting in an unfamiliar room hours from home, Lugo boiled over with anxious energy. At one point, the Mets' reliever grabbed his car keys and drove to a nearby Chick-fil-A, simply to have something to occupy his mind.

“It was pretty scary,” Lugo said.

Last March, during a routine one-year checkup for James, doctors noticed evidence of a heart murmur. Lugo’s pediatrician recommended an echocardiogram that revealed a hole in the heart, necessitating surgery.

The next nine months became a knot of stress for Seth and Amanda, who struggled to schedule the operation between the demands of the baseball season and those of their recommended surgeon in New York. Multiple times, the procedure was pushed back due to more urgent transplant opportunities for other patients. (On one occasion, Seth, James and Amanda were headed to the airport when the surgeon called to reschedule.) Despite the serious nature of James’ ailment, his operation was not as pressing; it simply needed to be done within the first few years of his life to avoid complications as an adult.

Eventually, the Lugos found a hospital in Tennessee that could accommodate their schedule and perform the operation only a five-hour drive from their home. So the family set out for Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, where doctors found a second hole in James’ heart and patched them both.

“All the other kids there had had heart transplants or different parts of their hearts weren’t working,” Lugo said. “Everyone we saw in there, you could tell they had been through a lot. I mean, it’s just heartbreaking to me, a place like that.”

The Lugos came away feeling blessed. Three days after his surgery, James was running around the hospital again. It wasn’t long before he was back to kicking balls around his backyard in Louisiana, going to neighborhood crawfish boils and on fishing trips with his father. He’s nearly done with cardiac checkups and won’t need any additional operations.

“Me and my wife both, we definitely look at life a lot different,” said Lugo, who is about to celebrate his third Father’s Day as a dad. “All the things that we valued and wanted as a family, most of it’s completely irrelevant now.”

For Lugo, who became an ace reliever despite health issues of his own as a prospect, including a displaced vertebrae that required major surgery to fix, the experience didn’t necessarily change his outlook on life. But he has realized over the past two years how much fatherhood means to him.

“I almost feel like I was born to be a dad … I just didn’t know it,” Lugo said. “I don’t think I’ve changed a whole lot. I appreciate stuff a little more after the surgery, but as far as I go about my business, I hope I pass that along to James because that’s just the way I was raised.”

Before James’ surgery, the Lugos had been negotiating with a realtor for a plot of land on which to build their dream home. The operation interfered with that schedule, and when the realtor continued calling Lugo as he was in the hospital, the family soured on the idea.

“We were like, ‘What do we need anything else for?’” Lugo said. “We’ve got a family. We’re happy. Later on if we want to [buy a house], we can. Let’s just be happy and enjoy James for the short offseason that we get. Why don’t we just be a family and do family stuff instead of worrying about anything else.”

That attitude is a core part of Lugo. When he was young, Lugo was always with his parents, whether at church or on fishing trips, at birthdays or on holidays. It’s the same upbringing he wants not just for James, but for both of his kids.

Days from now, Amanda is due to give birth to the couple’s second child -- another son. Lugo will leave the Mets for a few days to be with James and his wife, as the family takes another opportunity to revel in its blessings.

“I’m actually pretty excited,” Lugo said, laughing. “I know I’m probably not going to sleep much and my golf game’s probably going to go to trash, but I think I can make up for it when they’re old enough to swing clubs themselves.”