Why I Love The Trade Deadline

I'll put together another post in a few days that will try to draw some conclusions from the deals we have seen this week, but for now I'm going to be more philosophical about why this is one of my favorite days on the sports calendar each year.

The Trade Deadline in Major League Baseball is a completely unique experience. Though trade deadlines exist in other sports, you almost never see this kind of excitement surrounding them. Trades in the NFL are so rare that you're more likely to see a California Condor than a blockbuster deal. Trades in the NBA occur almost exclusively in the off-season. The NHL is the only other major professional sport that can even hold a flame to the baseball deadline, because usually there are more than a few teams trading pieces and trying to gear up for a play-off run.

The NHL deadline isn't quite the same, though. It has to fight with the NBA, March Madness, and Spring Training to get attention. For another thing, it takes place within the world of the National Hockey League, and recent polls suggest only 60% of the American public believes such a place exists.

But the real reason why I like the baseball deadline is not because it is superior to all the other trade deadlines. The reason is connected to why I love baseball itself; because the trade deadline reflects the intense, yet subtle, drama that is built into every single game.

Baseball is a game of possibilities. The pauses between every pitch allow you to imagine all the possible outcomes. The way the second-baseman shifts closer to the bag, or the way the pitcher eyes the runner at first, or the batter digging into the box - they all express the possibility of what might happen next. Every pitch is played out in the mind dozens of times before it is delivered on the field.

When the time for action comes, and the pitch is thrown, those possibilities reach a crescendo in a split-second, a time when anything is possible. On most pitches, not much happens. The ball is delivered back to the mound and the possibilities begin to mount once again. It is this relationship, between the action on the field and the drama of the mind, that makes baseball so uniquely appealing. The repetition, pitch after pitch, inning after inning,

In sports that are all about constant motion (like hockey, basketball, or soccer) the breaks in the game are interruptions that take us away from the action, but in baseball the long pauses are part of the beauty of the game.

So what does this have to do with the Trade Deadline? Everything.

The deadline embodies the same qualities that make baseball so great, because this is a day that is all about possibilities. For every trade that becomes a reality, hundreds of others are played out in the minds of fans and GMs across the country. Just like a baseball game, most of the action takes place in the mind, with adversaries staring each other down and trying to out-wit each other in pursuit of victory. Each day in the weeks leading up to this day is like an inning of a game, each rumored proposal is like a single pitch, containing within it all the possibilities of success, failure, and everything in between. Some become Home Runs, while others end up as strikeouts, but most remain in the mind, never given the chance to become reality.

This is an experience that is, in my opinion, utterly unique in the world of sports. And that's why I enjoy it so much.

I imagine that it is the same kind of feeling that many have for the NFL draft, but I've never really enjoyed that as much. It's too formulaic, too ordered, to have the same sense of infinite possible outcomes. In that way, it reflects its game as well. The formula of football precludes the feeling that "anything is possible" because you have only four downs, you have only 60 minutes, and the draft is the same way: you have only 7 rounds, you have a set amount of time per pick. While baseball fans live for the drama of a thousand outcomes all possible at once in the mind, football fans live for the intense, though brief, moments of excitement and action.

So here we are, in the bottom of the ninth, only a few hours from the deadline. Every moment contains flashes of what might be. The possibilities are endless.