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MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: Tradiing deadline
Trading spaces

• As Tuesday's trading deadline nears, names are tossed around as teams weigh needs, such as long-term effects, club chemistry, power, potential and much more. But, almost always, one aspect remains brutally ignored: How a player's life will be turned upside down.

Paul Dehner Jr.

ATLANTA — Every year, during the last week of July, the transaction wire scrolls name after name across the bottom of the screen.

Last season, 11 deals involving 23 players were made during a flurry of trade deadline activity.

Beyond those 23, there were hundreds more involved in rumors. Many substantial, but most were unfulfilled speculation.

Each name represents the final piece of a championship puzzle for some and potential building blocks for others.

Names like Atlanta’s Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Texas’ Mark Teixeira, Kansas City’s Mark Grudzielanek and the Chicago White Sox’s Jermaine Dye dominate the headlines this year.

It’s easy for these names to become a series of letters, statistics and scenarios. Essentially, that is all they are to general managers who weigh averages and ages against salaries and strikeouts.

But behind every name resides a face.

And behind every face resides a family.

And hovering over every family during the tense hours leading up to 4 p.m. Tuesday when all non-waiver trades must be complete, hangs the possibility their house, their community, and more poignantly, their lives, could be uprooted and transplanted with one phone call.

“For my family, it was tough,” said Reds pitcher Kyle Lohse, who was traded from Minnesota to Cincinnati on the trading deadline last season. “We just found out my wife was pregnant with our first kid. We didn’t know what to do. She normally stays in the city I play in. She went back home to Arizona while I lived in a small apartment in Cincinnati for a few months.”

Lohse and his wife eventually had a baby girl in the offseason and everything turned out fine after a few trying months. But stories like his have become more the rule than the exception.

Particularly in the cases of veteran stars dealt away from teams they spent their entire career with. Case in point, the name most directly affecting the Braves: Teixeira.

The latest rumors involve the switch-hitting first baseman coming to Atlanta for Saltalamacchia, prospect Elvis Andrus and pitcher Kyle Davies.

Teixeira was the Rangers’ No. 1 pick in the 2001 First-Year Player Draft and has been in the big leagues since the beginning of the 2003 season.

He and his wife, Leigh, live in Dallas, have their own charitable fund which provides scholarships to local schools and have become fixtures with the Rangers’ organization.

“Obviously with the guys that have been here awhile, the idea of Tex being gone strikes a nerve,” Teixeira’s long-time teammate Michael Young told MLB.com. “We’ve been through a lot together. I’ve made a point of saying I want to go through my whole career playing with Tex and Hank (Blalock).”

Yet, every day, the rumors swirl faster, now approaching the final hour. The constant speculation can drain a player. In fact, Teixeira no longer answers any trade-related questions.

It’s nearly always a sensitive subject this time of year.

When asked to talk about his dealings with the deadline, Bob Wickman, who Atlanta acquired from Cleveland last year, would only utter an annoyance.

“I’ll pass,” he said.

Whether it be Wickman, Teixeira or whomever, every player will have issues to deal with if a trade goes down.

The unknown nature of the situation can hold a family hostage.

“When they hear about it, they start preparing themselves, too,” said Braves hitting coach Terry Pendleton, who was traded from the Marlins to Atlanta on the deadline in 1996. “If you are at home, you know this is going to be home, this is base. (If you’re traded) you just have to go play there and get back to base.”

Pendleton would certainly be considered an expert on the situation. He played for five different teams during his 14-year career. He also went to the World Series five times, three of those with the Braves in the ’90s.

He acknowledges the stress than can go along with this time of year, but points out it is more difficult on a veteran than a younger player.

For someone on the other end of the possible Teixeira deal like Saltalamacchia, the 22-year old who made his MLB debut earlier this year, he is just happy to be arriving at a major league park everyday.

He and his wife Ashley, and daughter Sidney, have lived in his hometown of West Palm Beach, Fla., as the 2003 first-round pick bounced through the minors.

“It’s part of the game, it’s part of the business,” Saltalamacchia said. “I’m not going to let it bother me right now. If it happens, it happens.”

This is the modern business of baseball. The final wave of players like Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn — who entered the Hall of Fame Sunday having played for the same team their entire careers — has passed.

The current collective bargaining agreement gives players who have been in the league for 10 years and with the same team for five veto power over trades.

But until that occurs, their lives are, for the most part, at the will of the general manager.

Most players accept that. Most wives and children also understand the situation.

But that won’t make stomachs turn any less when the phone rings over the next few days.

The situation is brutally unpredictable.

In reality, players will always be just another number. Over the next few days, their families will see if that number is up.

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