Why Baseball’s trading deadline is the best
Scribbled Notes on a Cocktail Napkin: Inside stories from baseball trades over the years in my life as a teenage fan and adult reporter
Major League Baseball’s trading deadline is the best of all sports. Which contending teams will add a role player or a superstar? Which rebuilding teams get prospects for the future? The trading deadline is Monday and I feel like telling some stories about my memories of midseason trades.
It’s July 2005, the final day of the All-Star Break. I’m the A’s beat writer for The Oakland Tribune back then. I’ve got a story due the next day and I’ve got nothing. I know the A’s are holding an optional workout, so I drive to the Oakland Coliseum, hoping that I can just get some decent quotes for a not-too generic “second half preview story.”
I’m the only reporter who showed up. Hardly any players are there. But I notice some unusual frenetic energy. My reporter antenna is up. Even all these years later, it’s probably best not to say my source. But someone says, “walk with me” as we leave the clubhouse.
“We’ve just traded Eric Byrnes to the Rockies.”
I made a U-turn and returned inside the A’s clubhouse. Byrnes was at his locker. I remember a pitcher named Ron Flores was there, trying to cheer him up. “Dude, you’re stoked, you get to hit at Coors Field.”
Byrnes did not look stoked. He was in shock. He grew up across the Bay in Mountain View, was drafted by Oakland in 1997, and the A’s were the only organization he ever knew. He was frequently rumored to be traded, but the A’s never pulled the trigger.
His energy made Byrnes an enormous fan favorite. It was impossible not to like him. If you ever watched Byrnes play, or watch any of his post-career media work, you know the guy is constant energy. Words flow easily, in rapid fire succession, from his mouth. He once bounced back and forth in the clubhouse, playing poker with his teammates, and answering questions from us reporters when it wasn’t his turn.
But on that day, when a trade finally occurred, he was stunned. It’s one of the rare times in my life that I’ve been next to a player literally minutes after he was told that he was traded. The humanity was palpable.
I cajoled a few quotes out of Byrnes for my story, which I found on newspapers.com, and posted below.
My day was far from complete. I remember driving back across the Bay Bridge and a producer for ESPN called me to request an interview. Or maybe I’d already agreed to the interview earlier and lost track of time. I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. I just remember being on my phone, live on ESPN, as I drove across the bridge.
The Byrnes trade was still not public. [Twitter didn’t exist for another three years.]
I’m pretty sure it was Bill Pidto interviewing me. He asked about the A’s trade that was public – sending reliever Chad Bradford to the Red Sox for outfielder Jay Payton – and how this impacts the A’s roster. It seemed like they had too many outfielders and not enough pitching.
That’s when I broke the news on ESPN that Byrnes was traded to the Rockies for pitchers Joe Kennedy and Jay Witasick.
I’ll never forget the end of the interview. I could hear the smile on Pidto’s face as he said, “we bring Josh on ESPN and he breaks some news for us.”
"Scribbled notes on a cocktail napkin" is my weekly Sunday feature that's a tribute to the sports columnists I grew up reading who penned Herb Caen-inspired three dot columns. It's an excuse to shamelessly plug my other side projects, post my favorite Immaculate Grid from the week with a story about one of the players, link to stories I found interesting, and string together loose topics on my mind.
Rickey Henderson comes home
It’s June 1989. The trading deadline was June back then. I don’t remember exactly where I heard the news that my favorite player was being traded back to my favorite team. I’m 15 years old. But I vividly recall working a shift as a busboy at Marie Calendar’s and that’s all everyone was talking about in the restaurant.
Rickey Henderson is back home!
It’s easy to forget this now, but there was actually trepidation about the trade. The general consensus was, “which Rickey are we getting?” Is it the Rickey who electrified the Oakland A’s as a young player or the Rickey who seemed to always be complaining as a New York Yankee?
I was with my Dad at the Coliseum for Rickey’s first game back with the A’s – June 22, 1989.
I have memories of an electric atmosphere. (In reality, the attendance was 21,418.) I knew that we cheered Rickey loudly the entire game. It was a day you could just feel a difference, that Rickey was the missing piece for the A’s, after losing the 1988 World Series to the Dodgers.
It wasn’t just that the A’s needed a leadoff hitter. It was Rickey. He was coming home to Oakland, reunited with his childhood friend Dave Stewart, and able to vibe with Dave Henderson and Dave Parker.
The A’s were struggling at the time. Jose Canseco broke his hand in spring training and missed the first three months of the season. Mark McGwire wasn’t hitting. The A’s were in first place, but only led the Royals by two games.
Rickey slid home, head first, to score a run in his first game back. We all went nuts. We knew. Nothing was going to stop the A’s that year.
Nothing did … except an earthquake.
Rickey Henderson was almost a Giant
It’s also easy to forget that Rickey Henderson was almost traded to the other side of the Bay. The Giants were prepared to send outfielder Candy Maldonado and pitcher Scott Garrelts (who a month later started the All-Star Game) to the Yankees.
Rickey had a full no-trade clause and rejected the trade.
“I’m not going to Candlestick,” were Rickey’s exact words to reporters.
In retrospect, the Giants interest in Rickey was curious. They had an outfield of Kevin Mitchell in left field (he won the MVP that year), speedy leadoff man Brett Butler in center field, and Candy Maldonado in right field.
Obviously, Rickey was way better than Maldonado, but they would have had two leadoff hitters, two left fielders, no right fielder, and lost their best starting pitcher.
Rickey’s veto of the trade was better for the Giants.
The only team Rickey would agree to a trade was the Oakland A’s. On June 21, the Yankees sent Rickey home, in a deal for pitchers Eric Plunk and Greg Cadaret, and outfielder Luis Polonia.
The trade invigorated Rickey. In 85 regular season games, he scored 72 runs, stole 52 bases, and compiled a .425 on-base percentage as the A’s won the AL West.
Rickey was the Most Valuable Player in the AL Championship Series, reaching base in 13 of his 22 plate appearances, including four extra-base hits, and eight steals as the A’s dispatched the Blue Jays in five games. Then he batted .474 in the World Series, including a leadoff home run in Game Four, as the A’s swept the Giants in the Bay Bridge Series.
It was the most important trade in A’s history, and I believe, it was the birth of the importance of the trading deadline.
Plenty of midseason trades occurred previously. But in the years that followed, the date of the deadline was moved to July 31, there was separate deadlines for waiver and non-waivers trades, blocking players became strategic, and the deadline grew up in importance.
The year after the A’s got Rickey, the A’s got Harold Baines and Willie McGee for the final month.
Two years later, the A’s traded Jose Canseco.
In 1993, the Braves got Fred McGriff and held off the Giants on the final day of the regular season, 104 wins to 103 wins, before the safety net of a wild card.
Also in 1993, after Rickey’s four-year contract with Oakland was about to expire … again … so the A’s traded him … again … at the trading deadline … again … this time in 1993 to the Blue Jays. Four months later, the A’s resigned Henderson as a free agent. Again.
This week’s not-so-random Immaculate Grid name: Eric Plunk
The famed 1989 trade wasn’t the first time Eric Plunk was traded for Rickey Henderson.
In 1984, the A’s sent Rickey (about to become a free agent) to the Yankees for Plunk, Jose Rijo, Tim Birtsas, Jay Howell and Stan Javier.
In 1989, the Yankees sent Rickey (about to become a free agent again) back to the A’s for Plunk, Greg Cadaret and Luis Polonia.
“If this dude would retire,” Plunk remembers thinking, “maybe I could stay in one place.”
Plunk found out about the second trade when he was going to the bathroom. The phone rang at 8 am, Plunk’s wife answered the phone, and once he finished his business, he heard the news.
“I’m glad the dude I got traded for was good enough to go to the Hall of Fame,” Plunk says. “It’s not like I was traded for Wally Pipp or somebody like that.”
Plunk missed out on the A’s 1989 World Series title because of the trade. He went on to pitch 14 years in the majors. He’s most known for his time with the Indians, reaching three straight playoffs and the World Series twice, but the Tribe came up short both times.
I also feel it’s important to note that Plunk only plunked 32 batters in 1,151 career innings.
Mannywood comes to Hollywood
It’s July 2008, I’m working as the co-host of Post Game Dodger Talk, along with Ken Levine. The Dodgers were holding a press conference to announce something charity related.
Twitter was relatively new and going wild that Manny Ramirez was traded to the Dodgers. All of us reporters no longer cared about what then-owner Frank McCourt was saying. All that we wanted to know was whether Mannywood was coming to Hollywood. Understandably, McCourt wanted to wait on discussing Manny until it was official and he wanted his moment for his charity.
That night, and every night for the next two seasons, the overwhelming topic for Ken and me on Dodger Talk was Manny Ramirez. He was the ultimate talk radio gift that kept on giving.
In 2008: Will he hit? Will he keep hitting? Will the Dodgers sign him? Will he cut his hair? No, really, will the Dodgers re-sign him?
In 2009: Will he hit like that again? Wait, he got suspended for steroids? How will the Dodgers do without him? Will he hit when he’s off steroids?
In 2010: Will he ever hit again? Can we trade him? When will he be gone?
Players traded who swap houses
In the world of professional sports, there is this fascinating underground housing market about players renting houses from each other, or just agreeing to swap residences for the season.
In 2005, the Cleveland Indians traded infielder Alex Cora to the Boston Red Sox for fellow infielder Ramon Vazquez. Cora and Vazquez were both from Puerto Rico and friends. They agreed to also trade living spaces.
On the field, the Red Sox received a slight edge from the more experienced Cora.
When rent was due, the housing costs were the same for the players.
But in square footage, Vazquez won the trade in a landslide. Vazquez got a four-bedroom, two-story place in Cleveland with a backyard. Cora got a one-bedroom apartment in Faneuil Hall that he’s affectionally called, “a f—ing matchbox.”
Traded to the other clubhouse
In August 2009, while the Dodgers and Diamondbacks were playing a series in Los Angeles, they completed a trade that sent pitcher Jon Garland from the visiting clubhouse to the home clubhouse.
Not only did Garland made his Dodgers debut against his former teammates, his second start was also against the D’backs.
Sometime like this actually ends up happening every few years.
The most famous is probably when the Mariners traded Ichiro Suzuki to the Yankees in 2012 when the teams were playing against each other in Seattle. It provided the Mariners fans an opportunity to give Ichiro a rousing 45-second standing ovation before his first at-bat in Yankees pinstripes.
An emotional Ichiro bowed twice to the cheering fans … then singled and stole second base.
It even extends to the minor leagues.
In 1985, the Dodgers acquired third baseman Enos Cabell in a trade with the Houston Astros for pitcher Rafael Montalvo. On the day of the trade, the Astros triple-A affiliate happened to be in Albuquerque playing the Dukes, so Montalvo moved from the home clubhouse to the visitors clubhouse and became a member of the Tucson Toros.
#HugWatch season is here
We liked to refer to the final few days before the trading deadline as #HugWatch season. If you see a player hugging teammates, he probably just got traded.
I remember July 2013. I’m in my current job as the play-by-play for the Albuquerque Isotopes, back then the Dodgers Triple-A affiliate. We had a doubleheader because we were rained out the day before.
Between games, Isotopes relief pitchers Josh Wall and Steve Ames were informed the Dodgers just traded them to the Marlins for pitcher Ricky Nolasco. Pack your bags. Hug your now former teammates. You’ve got a plane to catch in a few hours for your new team.
The trade deadline is fascinating for fans and hectic for reporters.
For the player\s, their lives change instantly. They can get a chance to win a World Series (like Rickey Henderson), or miss a chance at a ring (like Eric Plunk), or say goodbye to their home region (like Eric Byrnes), or forced to immediately compete twice against their former teammates (like Jon Garland).
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Are you sure Rickey didn't say "Rickey's not going to Candlestick"? :)
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