Is Tampa not in the AL East anymore?

Noted and corrected.  I confused Millar with Eric Hinske as the player who was one team away from completing a tour of duty in each A.L. East city.

Okay - I'll be the first.

After watching him repeatedly, and almost single-handedly lose multiple games by hitting like your momma in key moments with runners on during games that were still close, I posted at some point if it was Vernon's eyes that were the problem here.  How could an athletic, previously decent hitter, continue to hit weak pop-ups on completely hittable pitches that should be driven deep to the gaps?

I saw 2 problems with his bat:

1) He never seemed to look to drive the outside pitch the other way (though that was what pitchers always threw him)

2) When he actually got a pitch down the middle to hit, he'd pop it up to centerfield or center-infield.  His timing was there, but he was swinging too low!  The few times he'd crank it were on pitches high above his belt.

Now clearly #1 should not be affected by a wrist injury... but #2 in my mind could very much be related?  I suspected bad eyesight, but was it a wrist injury?  Is there in fact some light at the end of this horrid tunnel of despair?

There could well be an underlying cause for Wells' dismal 2009, but what if there is no cause at all other than just a rapid demise? And yes, part of that demise could be health issues that just never go away.

The members of the once talented outfield of yore all hit a wall early on. Barfield and Moseby each had their last good year at age 31. Bell's was at age 32. Could Wells' last good year have been at age 29? Is that too young to be lumped in with the other three?

Another player from that period, and one with an admittedly less impressive CV, was Kelly Gruber. He had his last good year at age 29.

I have no theories on the matter but I would say that Wells is due for a dead cat bounce in 2010, if nothing more. I'm sure those who are more optimistic are looking at his four-year OPS+ trend of 129, 85, 121, 87, and hoping for better. I know Wilner is big on citing Joe Carter's crummy age-30 season and pointing to what he did afterwards. But is that kind of recovery not more exception than rule?

Wasn't that what Rob Ducey was put on this earth for?

I hear you. Rob Ducey had, to my mind, all the skills required to be a solid 4th outfielder. He could play all three outfield positions, had a lefthanded bat and could hit enough to contribute. The organization squandered his developmental years always keeping him around as an emergency valve, nothing more. By the time he got sprung free from Toronto, he was too old to really turn into something.

It was surprising to me to learn that so many years later he'd end up back with the organization that so unapologetically hampered his professional career.

has it ever come out that he [Junior Felix] was older than his 21 years

Magpie or Mike Green will probably remember the details. I seem to recall that it was definitely the case that Felix turned out, after his career, to be older -- a lot older -- than advertised, something on the order of 6 or 7 years. Yet all the stats sites still list his DOB as 1967 and Googling yields nothing. Perhaps no concrete evidence was ever found and his age fraud was nothing more than speculation, even if treated as fact in media circles.

Spring Training in 1988 was a bizarre experience. That was the spring that Jimy Williams and George Bell had their histrionic disagreement about George being DH. I can still see George strolling insouciantly down the sidelines towards the pitchers sitting by the left-field fence, as his turn to bat (as DH) was about to come up. He ignored poor Jimy.

Then there was the first coming (and last, as far as Toronto spring training) of Sil Campusano, a skinny kid who pretty much looked out of place, though he was a graceful fielder.   Moseby, whose center-field spot had seemingly been given away to Campusano, was usually in left at practices, and constantly (and loudly) ragged Campusano (as well as Glenallen Hill, whenever Hill hit a long fly ball and watched it admiringly). Hill was the more swashbuckling in demeanour, and was only 23. Moseby let him have it pretty hard. And Hill didn't make the big club until the next year, by which time Moseby was firmly back in center.