That Time The Atlanta Braves Traded For Barry Bonds
By Josh Brown
The next morning, John Scheurholz planned to call the media and notify the appropriate news outlets and send out press releases. Right before doing so, he called Ted Simmons just to coordinate the timing of the news. It’s a good thing Schuerholz made that call.
Apparently, when Ted Simmons notified Pittsburgh Pirates manager, Jimmy Leyland, of the trade, Leyland completely lost it. Upon receiving the terrible news (for Pittsburgh, of course), Leyland stormed into Pirates president Carl Barger’s office and completely raised hell. According to Terry Simmons, Leyland was so violently livid about the matter that the Pirates president called off the trade immediately. So, at literally the very last minute the deal that would have brought Barry Bonds to Atlanta was called off. All because of Jimmy Leyland.
Alejandro Pena would go on to play for four different teams before retiring in 1996 and would have an okay career. Keith Mitchell would only make it out of the minors three times until retiring in 1998.
Now, if you’re not privy to baseball GM negotiations, agreeing upon a deal over the telephone was and is completely kosher. People still do it. Bailing on any deal after two GMs have verbally committed virtually never happens. Especially an enormously high profile deal of this magnitude.
The course of Braves history, and baseball history, almost took a drastic turn in the spring of 1992. Can you imaging what it would have been like had Barry Bonds been an Atlanta Brave?
Would he have put up the same home run numbers as he did in San Fran? Would his personality have fit in with the upstanding respectful Braves clubhouse culture that Schuerholz and Bobby Cox maintained religiously? Would Barry Bonds and Chipper Jones have gotten along? What would he have thought about the Braves’ strict no-jewelry rule?
Can you actually imagine a clubhouse with Chipper Jones and Barry Bonds? During his time in San Francisco, Bonds had his own $3,000 lounge chair at his locker. I’d like to have seen him try to pull that sort of treatment off around Bobby and Chipper.
Next: Don't Spend That Cash Yet!
As baseball history unfolded, Bonds went to the San Francisco Giants in 1993, and by not spending big on a Barry Bonds multi-year extension, the Atlanta Braves used that money to sign a guy named Greg Maddux who now thinks he’s a Cub.