Coming to Terms with Scott Kazmir

So who else saw the sports section in the New York Times today? Splashed across the top of the page was an article about a Mets prospect turned Major Leaguer, a prospect so highly regarded that he forced his way to the Majors before being legally allowed to purchase alcohol.

Lastings Milledge? On the day he debuted? Nah... too obvious.

Scott Kazmir? Ahh, there's the ticket!

As I gazed bleary-eyed at the lead article of the NYT sports section this morning (click the title above to read), I almost thought my buddy Nails had taken over as Sports Editor of the New York Times.

For those not personally familiar with Nails, he's basically your classic pissed off Mets fan, except that instead of being a Democrat, he's a frothing conservative.

More important than his political inclinations, however, is that he's a former employee of the Mets. In his one summer at Mets, Inc., Nails studied the reports from the Mets' minor league system, most likely because the product on display at Shea Stadium, in the summer of 2003, was simply too depressing.

All of us hardcore Mets fans had heard about Scott Kazmir by then. We'd been aware that the Mets had stolen the jewel of the pitching crop in that year's draft with the 15th overall pick in the draft, where Kazmir had fallen due to fears that his agent, Scott Boras, would seek undue compensation for his client's services.

But it wasn't until Nails started his summer at Shea that I began receiving my weekly e-mails about Kazmir's latest performances, complete with Nails' amateur scouting reports indicating that Kazmir had a plus-plus fastball, plus makeup, plus-plus muffin ass, etc., etc., etc.

Zoom forward to the present day and Nails no longer sends his scouting reports, but in the e-mails he sends every 5th day, he makes certain that none of the five or six Mets fans on his listserve ever escape into the ignorance is bliss camp vis-a-vis Scott Kazmir.

Reading the article, which was written by actual NYT Sports Editor Lee Jenkins and which quickly shot up to the No. 2 most e-mailed sports story on the Times' website (and will doubtless take over the top spot later in the day), you come to understand that perhaps it wasn't conceived as a cruel joke to be played on Mets fans, nor was it meant to rain on the Mets' Milledge parade.

Instead, the article casts the Kazmir trade as the monsoon before the blossoming Mets careers of Pedro Martinez, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, who were acquired, "in part," Jenkins writes, "because [the Mets] needed to restore credibility and regain fan confidence that had noticeably eroded after the Kazmir trade."

I'm not sure that anything can quite make up for the Kazmir trade. As I wrote to the Hound in an e-mail earlier today:

"At some point you've gotta realize that nothing is ever going to make you feel better about the trade. It was so ill-conceived on so many levels that even any silver lining will inevitably be obscured.

"However, if, 5 years from now, Lastings Milledge and Mike Pelfrey (the former of whom I'm convinced would have been traded at last year's deadline if not for the Kazmir deal, and not just because of this article) are established stars on the Mets, then perhaps a wrong would have helped make a right.

"If you've gotta think about the Kazmir trade, try and think of it that way."

That's a palliative cliche, sure, but that's really as good as you can do.

Take last night as an example. You can either look at it throught he prism of Alay Soler getting lit up and think, "If only Scott Kazmir was here," or you can look at it through the prism and think, "Well, if we had to trade Scott Kazmir to save Lastings Milledge, so be it."

It's fool's gold on some level, because really there's no reason that you shouldn't have them both, but try and remind yourself that a small part of the Scott Kazmir trade factored into the Lastings Milledge era, as we hope to call it some day.

As Lee observes, without the Kazmir trade, the Mets might well have traded Milledge for Manny Ramirez at the trade deadline last year. Now, that's a trade a lot of you would have been willing to make, but I'm willing to bet that 5 years from now Milledge looks a lot better than Manny does.

And last night at least, it looked like Milledge belonged.

As he swung his bat ferociously before the pitcher got set, he couldn't help but remind you of Gary Sheffield.

As he swung his bat ferociously through each hack at the ball, again he couldn't help but remind you of Sheffield.

As his massive wooden cross bobbed from side to side, he couldn't help but remind you of the man upstairs.

And as his major league career progresses, and as he hopefully becomes a premier player in the league, let his star remind you of the Kazmir trade, and let it remind you that sometimes a wrong can help make a right.

As a Mets fan watching the career of Scott Kazmir unfold, that's really the best you can do.

At least until free agency, at which point I insist that we break the bank to bring Kid K home.

- A.F.O.M.G.