How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Lastings Milledge

(Note: A piece from Cheddar Ben follows this one from A.F.O.M.G.)

I remember my first week as a working man.

It was that enchanted summer of 2005. Next year was now, Anna Nicole Smith was a complete nobody, Sip was employed, Cheddar was making waves at a small Western Massachusetts daily, and a young, fiery A.F.O.M.G. was set to join the both of them in the working world.

I remember looking around the room during training sessions. Classrooms filled with 20 recent college graduates all in suits or business casual, the kind of people who a few months earlier would've rolled out of bed, put on the same t-shirt they'd been wearing for a week, said 'fuck it' to their homework and partied the hell out of their remaining days at college.

Beneath the suits and gelled hair these were still the same people they'd been a couple months (hell, even a week) before. You could see it in their faces; the youth, the jocularity, the absurdity of their present counterposed with their recent past.

The point was really hammered home when I ran to the bathroom during one of our earlier sessions and discovered that someone had booted in a sink. I'm ashamed to say that my first month or two at college I had a similar episode, now here I was four years later, and some things had changed but a lot had stayed the same.

The point is we were very much professionals, but we were young and at times we made stupid mistakes. Some booted in the sinks, some sent e-mails before giving themselves time to think the better of it, others hooked up with that hot co-worker without regard for how awkward it'd be on Monday.

Not that I have any way of proving it, but things are different for a lot of those people now. I'm not saying we're all a bunch of stiffs or that we don't still go out and rage like we used to, but we've matured nonetheless. We're two years older now, we've been in the game for a little while, we've come to know the ropes.

It was an interview Lastings Milledge gave on WFAN yesterday that got me thinking of this. You know, Milledge was 21 last year when he got his first major league call up. In his time as a big leaguer, Milledge did enough to alienate his teammates, piss off a lot of Mets beat reporters, and lose the support of a pretty sizeable portion of the Mets' fan base.

I'm not going to say it was all completely unfair. No doubt about it, Milledge's problems last year were largely of his own creation. When you're a rookie and you're struggling, there's really no excuse for showing up late. End of story. The whole "Know your place, rook!" thing speaks for itself.

But I think we need to remember what we're dealing with here. We're dealing with a guy who was the youngest player in the National League last year. A guy who's 21 years old. Think of all the 21-year-old star athlete types you know. Sure there are a handful of David Wrights in there, but for every David Wright I'll bet there are five Lastings Milledges. It's the way of the world.

Wright and Jose Reyes have set the bar extraordinarily high. Wright's the guy every mother hopes her daughter will end up with, and Reyes, well, Reyes never stops smiling or dancing, so we cool.

Milledge just isn't that kind of guy, but as I listened to him speak with Mike and the Mad Dog, I realized he probably isn't the guy he's been made out to be by so many in the press, on the radio, or on the comment boards.

He's confident, yes, but humble in his way; he's an engaging personality, genuinely funny actually. It really was a side of Lastings I hadn't seen before.

The point is that there's still so much room for the guy to grow. We all did things when we were 21 that we regret; we all probably thought we were a bit smarter than we actually were.

The question isn't whether we made those mistakes, it's whether we learned from them, and it's the same for Milledge. If he makes all the same mistakes again, that's when you've got a problem. But if he makes a mistake once, learns from it and takes it from there, honestly, who are any of us to judge?

It's like our man Sean Maguire used to say: you're not perfect, sport... but it's not your fault.

Speaking of which... know who NEVER would have broken down crying in that situation?

Lastings Milledge.

- A.F.O.M.G.