Unusual Trades in Sports

From Jim Caple's Article "Outside the Box" on ESPN.com. My comments are in italics

FROM LEFT FIELD

In case you missed it, the minor league Calgary Vipers traded pitcher John Odom to the Laredo Broncos for 10 maple bats with a value of $650 (Odom was unable to get into Canada due to a minor but unspecified infraction). Odom appears to have a good attitude about the trade, telling ESPN's First Take, "Hopefully I can turn it into a good thing. I mean I might be able to turn it into a feel-good story. ... It's just one of those funny stories that will go down in history and that I'll be able to tell my kids about." That's the attitude. Odom isn't the only player ever acquired for an unusual price -- including some people who wound up in the Hall of Fame. Some of the more interesting ones:

Ernie Harwell: The Brooklyn Dodgers acquired the broadcaster from the Atlanta Crackers in exchange for catcher Cliff Dapper. (first of all... The Atlanta Crackers?? Second, Ernie should have said when he was leaving "I'm loooong gooooone")

Lefty Grove: Traded by a minor league team for the repair costs of its outfield fence that was knocked down in a storm.

Dave Winfield: The Twins traded him to Cleveland during 1994 strike for a dinner between the GMs if the season did not resume. (Hopefully it was a steak dinner and the Twins GM got desert. Dave Winfield is in the hall of fame

Randy Winn: Tampa Bay traded him to the Mariners for right to sign Lou Piniella as manager.

Harry Chiti: The Mets traded the catcher to Cleveland in 1962 for a player to be named later. The player wound up being Chiti, who went back to the Mets. (He was traded for himself. That is awesome)

Tim Fortugno: Minor league Reno traded him to Stockton for 12 dozen baseballs and $2,500 in 1989.

Johnny Johns: Traded for a 25-pound live turkey. (it was right before thanksgiving!)

Joe Martina: Texas Leaguer traded for two barrels of oysters. (whoever got the oysters was just trying to get lucky if you know what I mean)

Al Michaels: To sign the announcer, NBC traded ABC/Disney the copyright to Disney's old cartoon character, Oswald the Rabbit. (i have never heard of Oswald before but apparently he is huge in Japan. I think it was Disney's comparison to Bugs Bunny)

The Telectroscope

I received an email from the Mrs. regarding this telectroscope. Apparently the artist claims there is a tunnel from brooklyn to New York that was started by his great grandfathe. Its pretty cool

For all you grafitti artists out there

This is how its done

The Great American Ballpark

This past week I had the opportunity to go down to Cincinatti and see a game in the Great American Ballpark. I went with my friend Dave and stupidly we both forgot our cameras so these pictures are from the internet. Cincinatti is a pretty cool place. The cubs won the first game 3-0 and then the second game the Jon Lieber gave up 4 home runs in the second inning. All in all it was a good time and fun

Dr. Seuss Enterprises...

From Jayson Stark on espn.com

This week's coveted Greed is Bad award goes out to the rats in the hats at Dr. Seuss Enterprises.

Their crime? Forcing the well-meaning Lake Elsinore Storm, of the California League, to pull the plug on last week's brilliant Dr. Seuss Night promotion.

Why'd that happen? No, not because the Storm couldn't locate enough green eggs. Because the team couldn't locate enough green cash to convince the grinches at Dr. Seuss Enterprises to drop their threatened legal action.

Only one positive development came out of that cancellation -- one of the great press releases in modern baseball history, as penned by Matt Dompe, the Storm's director of game operations, and assistant GM Alan Benevides. Here goes:

The Padres affiliate, the Lake Elsinore Storm
Tried to put on a promotion that wasn't the Norm
We called it Dr. Seuss Night on our website
But something about that didn't seem right

Dr. Seuss Enterprises didn't see it as funny
They said we could do it but we didn't have the money
They didn't appreciate our publicity ploys
So we have to inform all the sad girls and boys Through the face of it all we thought we'd persist
Until we were served with a cease and desist
The theme has been cancelled but the game will go on
Perhaps it wouldn't matter if we were in Taiwan