Enter Lastings

One of the greatest happenings in baseball is when a stud Minor Leaguer makes his Major League debut.

There’s something poetic about it. It seems like we treat prospects like they are our children. We follow them through the minors. When people start talking about them, we smile as though we have done something right. And when they make it to the show, we are unbelievably proud.

And we always refer to the player as “the kid.”

The kid Lastings Milledge was called up by the Mets yesterday, meaning that my friends and I need to jump on a new kid’s bandwagon. You see, ever since it became evident that Milledge was going to be a star, we have referred to everything cool and new as the Lastings Milledge of whatever was cool and new.

(Example) A young girl might be the Lastings Milledge of girls – meaning she’s an up and comer.

Anyway, Milledge went 1-4 with a double and left three men on base. He also bares a striking resemblance to rapper Lil Wayne.

It’s going to be interesting to see how he does over the next few weeks and I think it will play a huge part in where he ends up. If he extraordinarily well, you can pretty much pencil him in the Cliff Floyd’s spot next year. But if he is around .280 with little power, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him traded for a big time pitcher in July.