The puzzle is coming together

You are sitting at your dining room table.  Dinner is over, the dishes, glasses, spoons and forks have been cleared away.  In their place is a box, the contents of which are scattered over the large, flat surface.  Hundreds of irregularly shaped pieces of all colors lie before you.  The only clue as to what they could be is the picture on the box.  It shows a jubilant pair of baseball players, resplendent in their crisp, white Los Angeles Dodgers home uniforms, each holding up one side of the World Series Championship Trophy.  They are Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw and are surrounded by a myriad of happy faces.  In the background, slightly blurred, is the iconic Dodger scoreboard behind right field displaying the final score of the last hard fought series game.

Until now, the pieces have been a multicolored jumble.  But a few of them have started to coalesce into a recognizable part of the picture on the box.  With the news that Matt Kemp is on the verge of signing an eight year, $160,000,000 contract, the puzzle is starting to take shape.  The image of Matt Kemp  is now clearly visible.  There are still hundreds of those small pieces that do not yet make sense, but it is a beginning.  You can see an eye and a toothy smile that appears to be that of Kershaw, but it is still far too early in your quest to see the completed picture.

All you can do during these dark autumn and winter nights is to keep working.  But you will keep going because you know that someday that the picture of a future World Champion Dodger team will be real once again.