Review: Going, Going, Gone

The Art of the Trade in Major League Baseball

by Fran Zimniuch. Taylor Trade Publishing, 2008.

Strictly speaking, Zimniuch’s new book should be “The Art of the Deal” since he considers not just the actual swapping of players, but other manners of transition as well, including, for the most part, free agency.

The book starts of with a welcome chapter defining various terms, such as waivers, disabled lists, roster size, and other topics the average fan might be too embarrassed to admit he or she doesn’t really understand. From there, the author dives into the phenomenon and history of the trade. What are the strategies involved? How does the general manager decide who and when to transfer?

Zimniuch does a nice, if somewhat been-there-before treatment of enumerating some of the biggest — and worst — trades in history: Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, et al; Rocky Colavito for Harvey Kuenn; and, of course, Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio. As a Mets fan, I can attest that he’s omitted a few, like Joe Foy for Amos Otis, and the deals that sent away future Hall of Famers Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, among others.

Perhaps the most important trade, however, was the one that exchanged Curt Flood for Dick Allen, since this eventually led to the Pandora’s Box of free agency when Flood refused to accept the deal and sought to have the U.S. legal system declare his freedom.

Free agency really constitutes the bulk of the book. Lost to history to an extent were the “contributions” of Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith, two pitchers in the mid-1970s who put the careers on the line, played the 1975 season without a signed contract, and were declared free agents, opening at first a trickle and the floodgates for the multi-stupid-million salaries of today.

The organization of the book is somewhat sloppy, since the author follows neither a chronological or topical order, jumping from trades to free agency, back to trades, including an additional chapter on questionable deals, ending with a trivia section that seems out of place. There were several errors in the page galleys I received that I hope were corrected for the final printing.

Nevertheless, Going, Going, Gone is an interesting and educational attempt to describe the strange issue of trading one human being for another. Only in sports will you find such a transaction (other than wife-swapping, I imagine).