Guten Tag, drones, and by the way, there’s a puzzle in the title that I bet all you little smartasses from The Request Line will figure out quicker than a cocaine heartbeat.

It’s Monday morning, (assuming I scheduled this correctly), and it’s time for mock drafting.  I was ready to go with a suggestion from RTD from earlier this year, (patience, Rikki, I’ll run out of my own ideas again next week), but then the Fahckin’s Bahstahn Red Sawx traded Raffy Fahckin Dehvahs to the gawddam San Francisco Giawnts and what the fahck even is that?  No know mwah suffahrin’!!!

No, really, the day after finishing a sweep of the Yankees, (who seem right on time with their annual ‘Tribute to the Titan Submersible’ implosion, but that’s a rant for another time), the Red Sox traded one of the best left-handed power hitters in baseball, Rafael Devers, to the San Francisco Giants for a whole big bucket of nothing,* except for the Giants being willing to pick up the rest of the Devers’s $250 million contract.

Now, this appears to be an absolutely terrible trade for the Red Sox.  I suspect, however, that in 4-5 years Red Sox fans will look at this as something of a relief, because even if none of the guys they get back today pan out, (and odds are they won’t), Boston did just unload a fat malcontent who can’t field and whose contract will almost certainly be a disaster by then, and at a minimum they won’t be paying Devers $30 million a year for another 4-5 years of below average production.  We’ll see:  maybe Devers will be inspired to get and stay in shape on the Best Coast and this trade will be even worse for Boston.  I certainly hope so, although I doubt it.

This is a long-winded way of bringing us to today’s topic:  Worst Trades Ever.

Only rule is it has to be sports; the Lenape trading Manhattan for $24 worth of beads and cloth, while indeed a bad trade, does not qualify.  That unnamed woman who traded her dignity, and sheets, for my virginity does not either, although even the Lenape look like mercantile geniuses in comparison to that one.

Anyway…

with the first pick I’ll take the obvious one, Babe Ruth to the Yankees in return for cash to allow Harry Frazee, Boston’s owner, to finance a Broadway play.*  Putting aside the ‘Curse of the Bambino’ nonsense, that was just a terrible ‘fuck you’ to the fans, and definitely a totally one-sided benefit to the Yankees.

Which rules.

The rest of you are on the clock.

*This apparently isn’t true.  As documented here, Ruth got into a contract dispute with the Red Sox and refused to play unless they doubled his salary.  Frazee noted that the Red Sox had finished 6th with Ruth, and could probably finish 6th without his as well.  His statements in that link also indicate he intended to spend the money he got from New York on players, not the theater, and that not only did the Yankees pay $100K-$125K for Ruth directly, Jacob Ruppert, (Yankees owner), also later made a personal loan to Frazee, (secured by Fenway Fahckin’ Pahk), of $300K.