Rare are the players with franchise talent, a volatile disposition and thrilling unpredictability, but newly minted New Orleans Pelican Demarcus Cousins checks each of those categories – and even that’s an incomplete beginning in describing the remarkably talented but mercurial star. Just one week after reports that Cousins was keen on signing the “supermax” contract (which would have totaled around $200m) with the Sacramento Kings, the team that drafted him in 2010, the 26-year-old star was shipped to the Pelicans on late Sunday night in a trade that stunned even the casual observer.
The return – rookie shooting guard Buddy Hield, veteran shooting guard Tyreke Evans, point guard Langston Galloway, a 2017 first-round pick and a 2017 second-round pick – left pundits flummoxed. Why trade one of the game’s best players for a collection of unproven and mediocre commodities? Why the make the trade four days before the trading deadline when a more compelling offer could have surfaced? Common consensus is that the Kings were fleeced – a familiar refrain for one of the league’s most inept franchises – but public opinion seldom sides with the team that deals a superstar.
The most striking element of the trade wasn’t that Cousins was dealt – his name has been floated as a trade chip for over a year – but the strangeness of the timing and the package. Most sports fans can rattle off famously lopsided trades (Reds trade Frank Robinson to Orioles for Milt Pappas, Cubs trade Lou Brock to Cardinals for Ernie Broglio, Nets trade Julius Erving to 76ers for $3m), but what about the truly unusual deals?
As these six trades demonstrate, transactions can delve into the ignominious and the absurd.
1) Boston Red Sox trade Babe Ruth to New York Yankees for $100,000
The trade that triggered the famed “Curse of the Bambino” is not only the most lopsided trade in the history of sports, but one of its strangest because of how the money was spent. Ruth, long known as the game’s greatest player and personality, had already established himself as one of the game’s great pitchers and hitters by 1919 for one of the league’s best franchises in the Boston Red Sox. He set a big league record by pitching 29⅔ consecutive scoreless innings, a record that would stand until 1961. He won two games in the 1918 World Series despite injuring his hand in a fight before Game 4 (before giving up pitching, he finished his career 3-0 in World Series competition). His prodigious talent was a significant attraction in a baseball-crazed country. By 1920, he would join the rival New York Yankees and become an American hero.
Unfortunately for the Red Sox, owner Harry Frazee struggled to meet loan payments after purchasing the team in 1916. Facing financial default, he started selling players off to the Yankees (16 total between 1918 and 1923 as well as general manager Red Barrow) because of his close ties to the Yankee owners. He sold Ruth for $100,000 and a loan of $300,000 to be secured by a mortgage on Fenway Park. Where the story gets truly strange is whether Frazee, a theater producer, used the money to finance the production No, No, Nanette, which originated as a non-musical stage play titled My Lady Friends. The play was indeed financed by the earnings from the Ruth deal, but it would not premiere until more than five years after Ruth’s departure and was part of a larger sum that Frazee had acquired through his other player sales as well as the eventual payment he secured in the mortgage deal for Fenway Park. Researchers have concluded that Frazee actively sought the acquisition of strong players in exchange for Ruth, but his financial trouble stemming from his inability to repay the Fenway Park mortgage, his failing theatre ventures, and an ongoing feud with American League commissioner Ban Johnson forced Frazee to sell Ruth on the open market.
The subsequent history is known. The Red Sox would not win another World Series until 2004, and the trade of Ruth was often cited as the central reason that the franchise was cursed. The trade, and Ruth’s legacy, are well-chronicled in Leigh Montville’s The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, Dan Shaughnessy’s The Curse of the Bambino and Bill Bryson’s Summer 1927.
2) Pacific Suns trade Ken Krahenbuhl to Greenville Bluesmen for Player to Be Named Later, cash and 10lbs of Mississippi catfish … an unopened Muddy Waters record and 50lbs of pheasant for a second baseman
Ken Krahenbuhl was scuffing his way through the 1998 season in the independent leagues, not affiliated with Major League Baseball, when he learned the Pacific Suns of Oxnard, California, had traded him. Thirty years old and one year away from his eventual retirement, Krahenbuhl was heading from a team in the Western League just 115 miles from his hometown to the Texas-Louisiana League to join the Greenville (Mississippi) Bluesmen. The return for Krahenbuhl’s services? A player to be named later, cash and 10lbs of Mississippi Catfish.
“Those people in California don’t know what good fish is,” Pacific general manager Mike Begley, who formerly worked in Greenville, said after the deal was completed.
Krahenbuhl, like any reasonable human being, was peeved to learn that he’d been traded for catfish – a meager 10lbs at that. In a sterling example of converting anger into vengeance, Krahenbuhl pitched a perfect game against the Armadillo Dillos in his first outing for the Bluesmen. ‘’I really wanted to do well in my first start,” Krahenbuhl said. “I wanted to show the Suns they made a mistake. I was upset that I was traded for just some catfish, but I’m glad I’m here in Greenville now.”
Krahenbuhl was mobbed by fans after the victory despite a torrential downpour that started in the ninth inning. His hat was stolen, but generous supporters passed around a separate hat to give him $48 as a reward for his performance. He took the money to go have a celebratory dinner and gambling outing at the nearby Lighthouse Point casino. What did he order to commemorate the career accomplishment?
Catfish.
3) Seattle Breakers trade Tom Martin to Victoria Cougars for a used bus
Tom Martin was an NHL journeyman who played 92 games over seven seasons and whose most notable stat was the 249 penalty minutes he accrued during his limited time at the highest level. His career statistics resemble that of the struggling player trapped in between the minors and NHL and whose name is otherwise forgotten outside of dusty trading cards and statistical archives.
Except Martin had a nickname, “Bussey”, that was earned by the most improbable trade that the hockey world ever witnessed. A fourth-round selection by the Winnipeg Jets in 1982, Martin opted to attend the University of Denver for the 1982-83 season, but his rights were held by the Seattle Breakers of the Western Hockey League. The Breakers figured they’d never use Martin, so the front office looked to ship him for something they could use. Instead of another player, the Breakers opted to ship Martin to the Victoria (British Columbia) Cougars for a bus. A used bus.
As NHL.com’s Evan Weiner tells it, Victoria purchased a bus from the recently-folded Spokane Flyers, but ownership decided it was too expensive to register it in Canada. While the Cougars had an extra team bus stuck in Spokane, Seattle’s had recently blown its engine on a long road trip. The result? Martin, an unusable prospect for the Breakers because of his choice to go to college, was shipped for, as Martin told Weiner, “a fairly new bus”. Martin never saw the bus, but he earned the “Bussey” moniker and would eventually make it to the NHL.
4) Fort Lauderdale Strikers trade Walter Restrepo to San Antonio Scorpions for hotel and transportation accommodations
Most stories of bizarre trades come from eras when professional sports weren’t as rich as they are now. But gander down into independent leagues and second- and third-divisions of less profitable institutions and you’ll still find some strange publicity stunts and attempts to save a buck. Just three years ago, Walter Restrepo was one of the most revered midfielders in the NASL despite coming off of a knee injury that ended his 2013 campaign. So it must have come as a surprise when the Fort Lauderdale Strikers shipped the 25-year-old to the San Antonio Scorpions for what was initially called “a transfer fee.”
Thanks to some dogged reporting by Pedro Heizer of 90minutesstrong.com, that “transfer fee” was hotel and travel accommodations for the 2014 matchup between the two teams. In a league where salaries are notoriously low and attendance is typically sparse, few would be surprised if a transfer fee amounted to nothing more than a pittance to help pay the bills. Even so, trading a player widely acknowledged as a top asset in exchange for basic functions of a professional club provided an illuminating if bizarre insight into life at the lower levels. The trade also produced a most unusual press release. After the deal was completed, Scorpions president Howard Cornfield issued the following statement:
“The Scorpions would like to thank Bill Brendel of the Crockett Hotel and Mark Thronson of Shark Limo, two long-term, great partners, for their incredible assistance. It was only through their assistance that we were able to get this deal done.”
When Sports Illustrated soccer writer Grant Wahl called both clubs, Cornfield acknowledged that maybe he should have simply specified “cash considerations” instead of thanking corporate sponsors, but that “no publicity is bad publicity unless somebody gets murdered or something.”
After a brief stint in 2016 with the Philadelphia Union, Restrepo returned to the NASL and has signed to play with the New York Cosmos in 2017.
5) Utah Jazz trade Fred Roberts to Boston Celtics for a third-round pick and two preseason games
A journeyman center with seemingly limited value, Roberts was the unlikely center of a bidding war between the Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics in 1986. The Celtics had offered Roberts, a restricted free agent, a modest two-year offer sheet in the range of $400,000. The backup center was of little value to a Jazz team flush with big men (including future Hall of Famer Karl Malone), but since the Jazz wanted a second-round pick in exchange for Roberts, they surprisingly matched the offer sheet. By rule, Roberts was to return to the Jazz unless a trade was executed. That’s when negotiations took a strange turn.
The Jazz wanted a second-round pick as part of the exchange, but the Celtics didn’t have one in the upcoming drafts, and the Jazz wouldn’t accept the Celtics’ final offer of a fourth-round pick prior to their decision to match. The trade eventually agreed upon was a third-round pick (which the Jazz used to select current Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Billy Donovan) and … an agreement for the Celtics to play two exhibition games in Utah. Boasting a roster of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Danny Ainge and Robert Parish, the Jazz front office must have thought that the draw of seeing so many stars would juice ticket sales and increase gate revenue. If not, it remains the most confounding package in NBA history. Roberts played sparingly for the Celtics for two seasons before he was selected in the 1988 expansion draft by the Miami Heat. (He would be traded to the Milwaukee Bucks before ever suiting up for the Heat.)
By his career’s conclusion in 1997, Roberts logged one of the most successful NBA journeyman careers in recent memory. Ironically, the Celtics trade came after he was traded by the New Jersey Nets to the San Antonio Spurs so the Nets could hire then-Spurs coach Stan Albeck. After joining the Bucks in 1989, Milwaukee head coach Del Harris commented “I have promised Fred that if we ever trade him, it will be for a human being.”
6) Indians trade Harry Chiti to Mets for Harry Chiti, Blue Jays trade John MacDonald to Tigers for John McDonald
Sometimes you’re traded for the Player To Be Named Later. Sometimes you are the Player To Be Named Later. As Harry Chiti and John McDonald can tell you, sometimes you’re both.
Harry Chiti was shipped from the Cleveland Indians to the New York Mets in 1962 for future considerations. The ‘62 Mets are widely regarded as the worst major league team of all-time and were the subject of famed New York writer Jimmy Breslin’s Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game. According to Breslin, the ‘62 Mets were “losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn’t maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough.” Chiti was every bit as sad as the rest of the 40-win team. The backup catcher, one of seven the Mets used that season, finished the year with a paltry .195 average and just one extra base hit in 15 games. By season’s end, the Mets shipped him back to the Indians, making him the first player to be traded for himself. It was the last he’d ever appear in the big leagues.
McDonald suffered a similar fate. The Toronto Blue Jays traded the fan favorite shortstop to the Detroit Tigers for the aforementioned player to be named later. Despite a decent showing as the Tigers’ backup shortstop (.260 batting average and his typical strong defense), the Tigers sent McDonald back to Toronto along with cash considerations. McDonald would log 16 seasons in the big leagues, finishing in 2014 with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
Honorable mention: Players to be traded for equipment
Several baseball players have been traded for equipment. Former Atlanta Braves reliever Kerry Ligtenberg was once shipped for $720 in baseball equipment as a minor leaguer. Former Seattle Mariners reliever Keith Comstock was shipped for a bag of balls and $100, which he had to deliver from one minor league spring training camp to another.
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