Time, time, time

In the blink of an eye, it has been two months since I last posted on this blog. There have been many newsworthy events that I wanted to blog about, but nothing that really made me want to finish writing an entry. Sure, I started to blog about this or that, which I will get to later, but in the end I decided not to post them. Why, you ask? Because I was not satisfied with any of them. I would start writing an entry and then feel like it was too short or too much rambling. So here are a few paragraphs of what I wanted to blog about but decided against.

The first thing that pops into my mind is the trade of former hot Mets prospect, Lastings Milledge, to the Washington Nationals. For those of you who follow the Mets like I do, you know that Milledge was a highly touted prospect. He was the first pick by the Mets a few years back and was the youngest player at the major league level in 2006. In 2007, he played in about half the games in a semi-platoon role with Shawn Green. His numbers statistically were okay, but nothing to write about. Over the last two or three years he has been the top minor league prospect in the Mets farm system and would have been the starting right fielder on the Mets in 2008. His potential was high. He could have been an all-star caliber player for years to come. He would have formed a solid trio of young cornerstone type players for the Mets along with Jose Reyes and David Wright. But, alas, that was not to be.

He got traded to the Washington Nationals for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider. Two players who, while solid major leaguers, have already shown what they can do at the major league level. They will not be stars like Milledge may potentially become, but they also will not have to go through some growing pains that Milledge will need to overcome to blossom into a star. I understand why the Mets made the trade. They want to win now in 2008 and/or 2009. The window of opportunity to win a championship is slowly closing on the Mets and they did not want to lose games at the major league level while Milledge finds his footing. So, they traded a high ceiling player for guys who can be more predictable. Am I happy about it? No. But I understand why they did what they did.

The second thing I was going to blog about happened around the same time in early November. Some crazy nut decided to hold some people hostage in New Hampshire. It would not have been national news but for the fact that the hostages were workers and volunteers for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Frankly, I do not understand why people do these things. I learned later on that he was having some personal issues he had to deal with and the bomb that was strapped to his body was not a bomb but road flares. It was a happy ending all around, but one I do not want to see on the news.

Which lead me to the third thing I wanted to blog on recently, the Presidential election campaigns. Although one of my good friends playfully accuse me of being a communist/socialist, I like to think of myself as an independent when it comes to politics. Maybe an ultra-liberal Democrat. All I know is that I want universal health care. I want free education at all levels. I want Social Security to be solvent when I retire. I want to feel safe and secure in my home, my home town, my city, my state and my country. Is that too much to ask for? If not, I also want low taxes.

Lastly, the Mitchell report that came out about two weeks ago. Every sports fan should read it here or at the very least read a summary of it here. It is a depressing yet insightful read. I readily admit that I did not fully read and digest the full version. I did read the relevant portions, especially the eight pages detailing the allegations against Roger Clemens. For those of you who live under a rock and do not know who Roger Clemes is, he might have been the greatest right handed pitcher in the history of baseball until the Mitchell report. Now he is busy scrambling trying to disprove the allegations and protect his good name. All I can say is that I hope he is successful if he indeed did not cheat by using performance enhancing drugs. But that if he did cheat, I hope he rots in baseball purgatory and I will laugh and laugh and laugh as he gets denied entry into the hallowed halls of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.