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Going places Here today, there tomorrow can be a scary experience
Updated: Monday July 30, 2001 10:19 PM
So I get into work and, before I can even squinch into the seat cushion in my ergonomically correct chair, the phone rings. It's The Boss. "John," he starts. Right away I know this is serious. He never calls me anything that doesn't contain the suffix "head." It's part of his managerial charm. "John," he says again -- even he realizes it doesn't sound quite right -- "step into my office when you get a chance." This is not good. This is not good at all. I start the long walk down the hallway. All of the sudden I feel like Sean Penn trudging toward that Great Unknown. And I didn't even get a decent meal out of this. I stumble into his office. I grunt something unintelligible. I sit down, gently, into a metal and cloth frame and look up. Lordy, that's a big desk. The Boss looks like some scary Pacific Island bobblehead doll from this angle. "John," The Boss says. He is dead serious. He's always dead serious, but this time, he seems especially serious. He's West Nile virus serious, and I'm just some doomed pigeon in Central Park. "I've got some news for you. "You've been traded." It is July 30. The trade deadline is tomorrow. I should have seen this coming. In the back of my mind, Dave Martinez is talking to me. Martinez is a professional baseball player, one of those guys a lot of people kindly call a "journeyman." He is a standup guy. He's been around for more than 15 years. He's played for nine different teams. He's been traded, according to the Baseball Register, five times. Four just last season. "Hard," Martinez , a utilityman now with the Braves, says somewhere in the back of my muddled mind. "It's hard. But you have to deal with it. After awhile, you just kinda get used to it." Getting traded is part of a baseball player's life. Cal Ripken Jr., Tony Gwynn, Kirby Puckett ... those guys are the freaks of the business, playing their whole careers with one team. Babe Ruth was traded. Cy Young was traded. Pete Rose, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Nolan Ryan. Just about everyone gets traded. Even the best. The top pitchers today, the ones with the most wins, the lowest ERAs, the most strikeouts -- all have been dealt. The hitters with the highest batting averages and the most RBIs -- they've been traded. (The guys who lead their leagues by hitting the most home runs -- Cleveland's Jim Thome and San Francisco's Barry Bonds -- strangely have not been traded.) Getting moved out is as much of a part of baseball as spitting and grabbing. That doesn't make it any easier. Where to live. Where to put the kids in school. How to get your stuff from here to there. Rent or own? Which bank to use? Barbers, restaurants, grocery stores, commute times. Parks, flower shops, golf courses, oil changes. Dentists. Pediatricians. North from south, east from west, where to go and what to avoid ... and none of it having to do with getting your job done. Of course, if you don't get the job done, that's another problem. Oh. You have little say in this trade thing, either. Unless you want to retire. "I just tell guys, 'Hey, be happy they're mentioning your name. That means somebody wants you,'" Martinez says. "'Cause when no one mentions your name ..." The trade deadline is Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET. One day you're pitching for the Mets, the next day you're pitching against them. One day St. Pete, the next Phoenix. It's a crazy, mixed-up way to live. All of this is tumbling through my head at a million miles an hour when I hear that voice again. "Hey, blockhead!" I rouse myself, wipe the drool from my keyboard and look up at the never-smiling mug of my ever-loving boss. Yeah, I'm thinking as I resume my tapping, that getting traded stuff has to be tough. But a few million a year must make it a lot easier to take. John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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