A five-year anniversary recently passed , and went sadly unnoticed.

The date was June 26, 2002. Mark Corey, then a relief pitcher with the Mets, smoked some pot with Tony Tarasco, an outfield reserve, in the Shea Stadium parking lot — and promptly had a seizure. When the true cause of the seizure was disclosed later that year, it was glorious. Tales circulated of Mets burying small amounts of shockingly low-quality marijuana, apparently laced with unknown and mysterious substances, outside ballparks throughout the country. A photo of prospect Grant Roberts smoking a bong made its way into the world and onto my computer, where it sat as a screensaver for quite some time. A crudely drawn sign featuring Mr. Met smoking a joint with bloodshot eyes was spotted at Shea, and ended up on the back page of the New York Post. Those were heady days indeed.

Silly as the supposed scandal was, it summed up the pathetic Mets teams of the late Steve Phillips era rather well. It wasn’t the shocking thought of grown men smoking weed that was so choice, but the idea of major league players so clueless they couldn’t even lay hands on drugs that wouldn’t cause seizures. No one remembers it now, but this was really one of the lowest moments in Met history.

Whenever I think about Lastings Milledge, I think about the incredible sight of a stoned Mr. Met. Why? Because since even before he signed with the Mets, he’s been causing the sort of harmless but embarrassing problems that the Mr. Met sign summed up — problems that are, I think, far less serious than many seem to think they are, but far more serious than others believe.

Milledge, who has played some incredible ball since being promoted to the majors last week, has been one of the more divisive players in New York over the last few years. There are two schools of thought on him. The first is that from his shady antics in high school to his cavorting with fans as a rookie last year to his hip-hop stylings as L. Millz this year, he has proven himself both a bad person a nd one who’s too immature and undisciplined to live up to his potential. The second is that he’s been unjustly persecuted by an uncomprehending and possibly racist press corps, that he’s really something of a misunderstood artiste, and that none of his shenanigans matter at all anyway, because the job of a ballplayer is to play ball.

As is usual with this sort of debate — think Barry Bonds — the nominal issue is just a proxy for the real subject of controversy. Really, this is about race, the role of t he press in an age of technological change, and other issues on which most everyone has strongly held opinions. That’s fine, and if people who think that ballplayers ought to be respectful to their elders and not wear elaborate jewelry want to argue with people who don’t care about any of that, no one should care. The problem is that writers, radio hosts, and fans get so locked into their talking points that they miss the real issues, which revolve around baseball and business.

The crowd that thinks Milledge isn’t going to play up to his potential because he’s too busy wearing big silver ropes and dropping rhymes is collectively out of its gourd. I’ve long been skeptical that Milledge is going to be a true star, because he hasn’t really hit for the kind of power a corner outfielder needs to be an elite player, but all he’s ever done is perform on the field, at high levels and at young ages. If Milledge’s antics were going to impede his progress as an athlete, they would have done so by now, and so the argument that he’s too arrogant or clueless to develop well doesn’t make any sense.

When it comes to business, though, things are different. Most of the charges against Milledge are just silly; if he’s spending too much time styling and profiling in the clubhouse, veterans ought to sit him down and scold him, but it doesn’t much matter as long as he performs on the field. Not everything is silly, though. For instance, those high school controversies keep coming up for a reason. They involved a 16-year-old Milledge and girls who were 12 and 13, and they weren’t just allegations — after the Pinellas County sheriff ‘s office investigated, Milledge had to go through what was described as “a diversionary program” before the charges were dismissed. Unless Milledge was outright railroaded (and that’s possible), something was badly wrong there, something that at the very least portended future instances of appallingly bad judgment. A 16-year-old is not achild, but a less mature version of the person he’ll be the rest of his life.

This is the proper context within which to see Milledge’s hip-hop excursions. They aren’t going to affect his growth as a player, and there’s nothing at all wrong with them in their own right, but a controversial young player who cuts a record promoting drug use and misogyny is showing truly bad judgment. It isn’t Milledge’s jewelry that makes people think he’s a time bomb waiting to go off; it’s his actions.

Should all this matter? Maybe not. Milledge is no Elijah Dukes or Josh Hamilton. There’s no reason in the world to think he’s going to threaten to kill someone or go off on a years-long drug bender. There is, though, real reason to think that he might just cause the sort of embarrassment to the organization that the Mets’ ganja-loving reserves did five years ago, only on a bigger scale. Whether that matters to you as a fan is a matter of personal opinion. It should matter to the Mets, though; it has to be weighed in and balanced against his on-field potential, the image they’re seeking to project to fans and sponsors, and his potential to mature and grow into himself.

As I’ve written before, everyone who thinks about the matter at all doubtless hopes that Milledge does mature, and that in doing so he remains spontaneous and exuberant while playing as brilliantly as JoseReyes and David Wright have. The Mets are truly depending on him, now, though — he’s their last, best option in left field, and they need him to play well and make sure that he only ends up on the back pages of the Post for driving in game-winning runs, as he did on Saturday. If he blows it, it won’t be because the Mets didn’t give him a chance

tmarchman@nysun.com