Another Sad Day in Mets History: Club Trades Milledge for Spare Parts

A little while back, ESPN ran a commercial where the "star" was a blanket with a Cardinals logo on it. We got to see the blanket and its owner grow up through the years and the different ways it was used. It started off as the blanket of a youngster being pulled in a red wagon and the commercial ended with the boy as a grown man, pulling his son in a red wagon with the same blanket. I don't remember the exact tagline, but basically it said something along the lines of - without sports, what else do we have to hold on to?

I grew up in New York, although I haven't lived there in 25 years. However, I still live and die with the Mets and the Knicks. If nothing else, you can't accuse me of being a front-runner.

Management of both teams have made it really difficult to keep the faith. There's the whole Isiah Thomas running the Knicks into the ground and that's on top of the epic collapse by the Mets last September.

But it just got worse.

The Mets just traded one of their up-and-coming stars, Lastings Milledge, for a bag of broken bats and a pop-up toaster. Actually, it's not quite that bad. Ryan Church is a pretty decent player. But he is considerably older than Milledge and has none of the upside. And Brian Schneider is a top-notch defensive catcher who can no longer hit.

I don't think even the Bush White House could put a spin on this trade that would make it seem halfway reasonable. Let's look at the pros and cons of the deal from the Mets' point of view.

Pros
Schneider and Castro will make a good catching tandem
Church is a good defender and is very good against RHP

Cons
Mets gave up the best player in the deal
Mets took on more salary
Mets traded future star to division rival
We can now add Milledge's name to Otis, Singleton, Ryan, Seaver and Kazmir as players the Mets traded and got pennies on the dollar in exchange.