20 Years on

February 18th marked the 20th anniversary of the Yankees' David Wells trade.

Briefly, the World Champion New York Yankees traded popular lefthander David Wells for steroid junky and controversial bully Roger Clemens.

We remember the date becuase it was our second day of work at CNN Inside Politics. We were in the car driving down King Street/Rt-7 after Mrs. Stroock picked us up at King Street Metro. We had been married about 6 months.

Our new job ended seven months of unemployment. We generally consider this the worst seven months of our life. Seven months of getting up with little to do other than take Mrs. Stroock to work and maybe cook dinner later. Seven months of insomnia, boredom, self doubt, self loathing. We used to avoid going out during the day so people wouldn't look at us and wonder why we weren't at work. And when we did go out we'd dress up a bit so we didn't look like we had nothing to do. After a while we took to driving around aimlessly just to get out of the house. Late nights involved a lot of laying on the coach looking for something to watch becuase we couldn't sleep.

We know what you're wondering. We weren't really a writer yet.

There always seems to be a residue on a memory from say November '98 or, January '99.

Even now it bites. Even today we don't like goofing off, or just knocking off and watching some TV or something. We started this blog so we'd have something to do in the afternoon and feel useful.

I dunno.

Maybe after 20 years we can stop beating ourselves up.