The Trade Nobody Argued About

Cleveland has two trades that come up every time the conversation turns to what might have been. The same man made both of them.

They called him Trader Lane, and Frank Lane earned it. In under three years running Cleveland he moved essentially every player he inherited. On April 17, 1960, two days before Opening Day, he sent Rocky Colavito, who had just tied for the American League home run title with 42, to Detroit for batting champion Harvey Kuenn. Nearly 53,000 people turned out for the opener to watch the two of them line up against the clubs that had just given them away. Terry Pluto eventually got a book out of it.

Two years earlier, Lane made the quiet one. On June 15, 1958, he shipped a 23-year-old outfielder to Kansas City in a five-player deal. The kid was hitting .225. He'd been shoved to center field because Colavito owned right. Almost nobody complained.

Three seasons later that kid hit 61 home runs in a Yankee uniform and won his second straight MVP.

Here's the part that lingers. The Colavito trade was obviously a disaster the day it happened. The Maris trade was defensible. Vic Power made two All-Star teams in Cleveland and won Gold Gloves at first. Woodie Held anchored shortstop there for the better part of seven seasons. Roger Maris looked like a fourth outfielder who couldn't hit enough to play every day.

The deals that haunt a franchise aren't always the ones that start the shouting. Sometimes they're the ones nobody bothered to argue about.