Biggest trades in professional sports

Frank: What the hell did you trade Jay Buhner for?! He had 30 home runs and over 100 RBIs last year. He's got a rocket for an arm. You don't know what the hell you're doin'!
Steinbrenner: Well, Buhner was a good prospect, no question about it. But my baseball people loved Ken Phelps' bat. They kept saying "Ken Phelps, Ken Phelps."

 

Alomar/ carter for Fernandez / mcgriff

 

The Walker deal was monumental mostly because of the sheer scope of it -- more draft choices/players than almost any trade in history. But Walker's name was already legendary for his college career, and as the biggest name to go the USFL, and I want to say he was the defending NFL rushing champion when he was traded. Plus, it was the Cowboys -- always a publicity magnet -- and the Vikings were billing it as the deal to get the one missing piece they needed to win the Super Bowl.

Yeah, that was a pretty big honking deal at the time, and it became bigger in hindsight after the Cowboys leveraged it (and other moves) to build a dynastic championship team.

 

Draft day deals:

- John Elway, Baltimore to Denver

- Mike Vick, San Diego to Atlanta; Tomlinson, Atlanta to SD (which led to Brees pick in second round)

- Scottie Pippen, Seattle to Chicago

- Dirk Nowitzki, Milwaukee to Dallas

 

I'll give you the Elway and Vick trades, because they were already big names. The other two were yawners at the time. I know the reaction in Dallas to the Dirk trade was anger -- Oh, no, they got another big white foreign stiff! Just what we need, another Uwe Blab or Chris Anstey, or even another Shawn Bradley (I know he isn't foreign, but...).

 

Jim Bouton for Dooley Womack was pretty big in literary circles.

 

Actually, when the Cubs traded Brock to St. Louis for Ernie Broglio, it was considered at the time that the Cubs were getting the better end of the deal. Broglio was an established starter who had won 30 games the previous two seasons, while Brock was considered a light-hitting underachiever.

But something about the Cardinals' chemistry suited Brock, and he had a great second half of the season in 1964, and was the key piece to their mid-60s mini-dynasty. David Halberstam, in his great book about that season, theorized that Brock was more comfortable in St. Louis because they had some key black players on their roster that served as mentors (namely Bob Gibson and Bill White). Broglio, meanwhile, developed arm trouble not long after arriving in Chicago (or perhaps already had arm problems, which is why the Cards were looking to deal him) and was out of baseball by 1966.

 

Chemistry has always been an important part of The Cardinal Way.

 

For my Canadian colleagues: Jackie Parker from the Eskimos to the Argonauts

 

Twelve-player swap between the Padres and Astros in late 1994.
Just because you'll never see that happen again.
There was a Pedro Martinez in the deal.
Not the Pedro Martinez, of course.

 

Some interesting ones there. Still, none of those players were the star of the league at the time.

People can easily forget that at the time of the Gretzky trade, the Oilers had won four Stanley Cups in a five-year span, as well as multiple MVP awards and scoring titles. He was a known commodity. Then there was the whole marketing angle. Here was the biggest star in the sport coming to Los Angeles. Nothing against Pittsburgh or St. Louis, but this was Los Angeles. For the Kings to acquire the game's biggest name, still in his prime, was enormous.