Who's Afraid of the MLB Trade Deadline?

At the ripe age of ten, I was far more stoic in the face of on-screen tragedy. You may gather from my phrasing, that this is no longer the case. So flappable have I become that the MLB deadline has brought me to my knees, assisted by my swift looping of Goodbye Stranger in the after. To be clear, part of why I now find these things moving is because I make an effort to. I find myself having to look away from the players' personal lives for fear that they are bigoted, nasty people, but I also think the fun is in the feeling. Frankly, I'm not sure it's possible not to be a little parasocial about sports, the engagement with which is contingent on feeling that you are part of the team. You win, you lose, and you affect the field of play. All that to say, I'm not immune to the rush of victory and through this, I've warmed up to the faces of my ball club (mistake).

I expected the deadline to be a tumultuous thing, but it was rough. Even the players I'd wanted gone had me misty-eyed. I think it must be very sad to walk away from a staff and team you love, doubly so when the threat of departure has been hanging over you. In the final year of your contract, you know you're on the chopping block should the team do poorly. You play hard because of this but it isn't enough nor is the work of all your peers, sending pieces of your once great team to the wind. It seems complicated to feel out, but most players land on missing the organisation and the friends they've made within it. Then their voices break conveying it all to the media and I can't help but feel awful for them too. I'm regretting last year's loss much more now because of it. A few days out from the deadline, I think the threat of selling perhaps did more harm than good and while I still don't expect a playoff run, I'm seeing aspects of their game improve.

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I do think I'm unearthing some semi-karmic sentiments through this as well. One player deemed likely to be traded was a starting pitcher on whom I'd imprinted much like a baby duck. He's old enough to have floated retirement and was finishing out the final months of a several year deal. For obstinacy’s sake, we'll call him Aaron Judge. So Judge became a kind of marker. If he were traded, it would be a clear sign of the team flagging in the playoff race— a damsel rescuable through nothing short of a miracle run. As the team careened into last place, he spoke openly on not wanting to leave and the fans in turn expressed a belief that he ought not to. Even so, he was shipped to a contender in the National League just a day before the deadline, marking my first and most miserable brush with the trade system.

I don't know enough about the sport or the goals of my team to measure their choices. What I do gather is that a team so far out of the playoffs is better off shedding players due to leave in the off-season for prospects, than losing them for nothing down the line. Moreover, as a team often criticised for being too lenient with its players, I think they'd have been under heavy scrutiny for keeping a tradable piece like Judge all for friendship's sake. The story they'd been telling of this team and why they needed to be better would fall apart. It felt necessary to the filmic kind of payoff I expect in entertainment. Still, knowing he'd be gone made me miserable, shockingly so. Recognising this desire for narrative fulfilment was strange too. Like I said, I feel dubiously about these players, but this one guy seemed altogether friendly and had been historically polite come pride night. I'd wanted him gone, hoped he'd stay, and have come out the other side quite sick with the belief it may never be undone. I've found a back-up team, at any rate.

 Following the trades of Judge and Co I have at numerous times been moved to emotion (delusion). The inciting incidents are as follows:

1. I found out he and his teammates cried together on-route to their next series, having heard that he was traded (multiple counts). 
2.  Saw the team's thank you post to him (multiple counts).
3. Read numerous comments by fans bidding his new team's followers "take care of him." 
4. Heard a different player choke on his words when asked about being traded. 
5. Saw his wife's farewell post to the city.
6. Found out he'd changed jersey numbers post-trade. 
7. Saw pictures of him meeting his now former team days later. 
8. Saw a picture of the empty poles on which his banner used to hang at the stadium. 

Despite my preface, the internal enormity of this loss makes me feel very stupid. I'm ashamed at the prospect of my sincerity and resent the parasociality of it in equal measure. There's a guilt for indulging in a team and sport so full of assholes and for trying in some way to uphold this one player as a nice guy, too. He's professionally polite to be sure, but I'd be catty observing it from anyone else. Then I wonder if it's really so crazy to demand basic integrity and respect from players in the first place. It's a lot of dooming, so I focus on the entertainment and convince myself that occupying this space is a kind of progress. In the end, I still like My Chem, thus abstaining from baseball was never going to make me moral. I don't know if it matters and the longer everyone harps on each trade the more I want to move on. It's getting weird and break-up-y on MLB twitter. Maybe in my head too.

 

I survived the deadline though (and all I got was this stupid blogpost). My good friend John Baseball said it best in that watching players go to and fro this way is a kind of gore. With that in mind I have to wonder what this'll feel like with more than a year's viewership behind me. I ought to pick up football instead and never find out, though I suppose they have a trade date of their own. I also just don't care for football. At least until spring, I'll be convincing myself in turns that Judge could come back, all the while dreading the next round of exits in winter. 

 

The lockout might do me some good, if it happens.