Moving Day (One Sixty-Two: Day 100)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred: Jake Westbrook, St. Louis Cardinals

For Major League Baseball, July 31st leaves some clubhouses looking like college dormitories in late August: suitcases strewn about, boxes stacked atop boxes, and garment bags flung over shoulders. This final day of July brings with it baseball’s trading deadline, the last day in which players can be shipped from one team to another without having to pass through waivers.

Almost everyone who is traded on this day is part of a deal that unfolds as follows: A pennant contender acquires an established veteran from a struggling team in exchange for younger prospects who will try and help the sub-.500 team return to prominence in the years ahead. In an ideal world, this kind of trade works out well for both teams, such as the deal two years ago that sent CC Sabathia from the Cleveland Indians to the Milwaukee Brewers. While Sabathia led the Brewers to the playoffs before bolting to the Yankees via free agency in the winter, Cleveland received a young slugger named Matt LaPorta who is now showing signs of excellence as the Indians’ starting first baseman. Unfortunately, it seems all too common these days that the playoff contender gets even better while the losing team ends up even worse than it was before. In 2003, when the Pittsburgh Pirates traded third baseman Aramis Ramirez to the Chicago Cubs, the slugging Ramirez led Chicago deep into the ’03 playoffs and remains the team’s starter seven years later, while the Pirates received prospects who had no impact on the big-league team. Baseball’s economics today tend to favor teams with more cash to spend, so the smaller-market teams often end up accepting less than the value of the player they’re trading in order to unload salary and save money.

However it all works out for these teams down the line, it remains true that today is Moving Day for dozens of young men. Starting pitcher Jake Westbrook, for instance, learned today that he must change his working address from Cleveland to St. Louis. It happens quickly, and ballplayers are expected to adjust on the fly. Of course, in a profession where the minimum salary is $400,000, there are some cushions here to the whole moving thing. Still, I try to think of myself in their shoes, and it’s a bit unnerving. I imagine being told, in late February, that I’ve been traded to another school in exchange for a first-year teacher and some SMART Boards. How quickly could I pack, say goodbye, and find my way to the new school? Which classes would I be asked to teach, and what would my schedule be? How would I bond with my colleagues, administrators and students? Would I be equally effective at this new place of work?

It’s an exciting day in baseball, but not necessarily an easy one for the ballplayers who are changing jobs. Those dorms can be overwhelming to a newcomer, and it’s hard sometimes to navigate your way through all the newness.