As the Rangers debate whether they are buyers or sellers at the trade deadline, it should be fun to look at some of the worst trades ever! Certainly, the worst is the Romanian Soccer player traded for 33 lbs of meat. The player immediately retired from playing, and team was very upset because they lost a player and the food. Switching over to baseball, one famous minor league trade was Lefty Grove who was traded so that the team could finally build a fence around their field. It seems that every game had to be played on the road until the team got the $3,500 from the Grove trade to build that fence. There are numerous stories of teams trading bags of balls, or a bag of bats for players.
Walter Restrepo was traded for two-hotel nights and transportation arrangements. Ken Krahenbuhl was traded for 10-lbs of catfish, there was more to that trade but it is a lot more fun to say it was just for the catfish. One minor league player Johnny Jones was traded for a 30-lbs. turkey and management when asked why said, “the turkey was having a better season”, as Jones was batting .194. Did you know that Cy Young was once traded for a $300 suit of clothes? Then there is the minor league Hockey player who was traded for a bus.
It seems the other team had an extra bus that didn’t run too well, so they traded it for Tom Martin. Yesterday the A’s traded with the Brewers for a pitcher for $1, but that’s not a new thing either because the Twins traded with the Mariners years ago for Terry Mulholland for $1 too. Apparently, some players have it in their contract that they cannot be sent down to the minors just to provide a team depth. The MLB team has no room, so all they can do is basically give them away for $1. Probably one of the most famous trades in all of sports was Babe Ruth. The trade was for cash, but the Red Sox owner at the time was enamored with Broadway, and used the money to fund a play called, “No No Nanette”. I have no clue how the play did, but I know what Ruth did for the Yankees. With trades come craziness, and sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t even get a good steak out of it.
Let’s hope Daniels chooses wisely, and leaves Broadway to the professionals. We need players, and players at this level can buy their own meat, or maybe he should splurge and buy some good red meat and toughen these guys up some. Whatever the case, I bet John Daniels has a bunch of suits in his closet, and all we need are some more-better players. Then again, how many steaks could you get for Prince Fielder, probably not as many as he can personally eat?
