Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Lastings Milledge: Potential Pied Piper of Baseball?

The media is really bigging-up this prospect for the Mets, Lastings Milledge, who was brought up to replace Xavier Nady, who was placed on the disabled list after an emergency appendectomy.

Check out the ginormous crucifix homeboy was sporting. I guess you need to ward off the undead at Shea. ;)

All kidding aside, although this kid is reported to have great talent and the Mets need to continue this trend towards using younger players, Milledge has some nastiness in his background:

When the Mets drafted Milledge in 2003, they knew he had some problem at school, something about getting in trouble for having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend. Milledge was expelled from Northside Christian School in St.Petersburg, Fla., and agreed to enroll in a juvenile arbitration program to avoid prosecution. The baggage was enough to scare off several teams, and Milledge, projected as one of the top three picks in the draft, fell to No. 12.

Soon after Milledge was drafted, the Daily News reported that he had been accused of having sex not only with his girlfriend, but with 12- and 13-year-old girls as well. For that reportedly consensual sex, he and the girls were expelled from Northside.

Milledge and his parents, who met with a Daily News reporter three years ago to discuss the allegations, denied he had sex with the younger girls. But a source with the Pinellas County State's Attorney's office, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The News at the time that if Milledge had not agreed to the arbitration program - with the approval of the girls' parents - he would have been prosecuted as a juvenile for molestation.

Obviously he was a teen at the time and the girls were teens (sort of), but red flags are going up. He could be the future R Kelly of baseball. Not good.

Read more...

2 comments:

Jardena said...

Yes, well, this is the team that had both Doc Gooden and Daryl Strawberry, perhaps they tired of drug abusers and thought branching out into child molesters was a step in the right direction. He just adds those touches of credibility and class that the Mets were looking for ;)

Michelle Pessoa said...

The Mets have had many problems with young players before. There was an incident about 5 years ago with several of their minor league players being accused of sexual misconduct with some teen girls in a hotel. Maybe they need chaperones? I don't know.