Trading, buying and selling players have always been key in building better baseball teams, and few things stir the interest and passion of fans so much as a blockbuster trade.
This work exhaustively chronicles the Babe Ruth purchase as well as the more than 600 additional transactions made by the Yankees. The author sets both the players and the deal in historical perspective, explaining why the Yanks and the other club involved made the deal, what expectations the owners, general managers and managers of the respective teams had for their new players, and, for some, what the players involved thought about their old and new teams. This book corrects many errors in trade dates listed in encyclopedias and trade registers.

Lyle Spatz recently stepped down after 25 years as the chairman of SABR’s Baseball Records Committee. He is the recipient of SABR’s Bob Davids and Henry Chadwick Awards, and among the books he has written or edited are biographies of Bill Dahlen, Willie Keeler, Dixie Walker and Hugh Casey.

Lyle Spatz
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 335
Bibliographic Info: 144 photos, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2009 [2000]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4083-2
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1

I. The Early Years      3

II. The Teens      20

III. The Twenties      38

IV. The Thirties      58

V. The Forties      74

VI. The Fifties      98

VII. The Sixties      130

VIII. The Seventies      157

IX. The Eighties      206

X. The Nineties      267

Selected Bibliography      313

Index      317

“complete…fascinating”—SABR Bibliography Committee Newsletter; “important…an excellent index…highly readable”—Nine; “every trade, sale and promotion in Pinstripe history, including the scandalous swaps during the 1950s between the cash-strapped Athletics and their big-city New York ‘cousins’”—USA Today Sports Weekly; “covers every trade, player sale, purchase or free agent signing made by the Yankees from their first on June 10, 1903”—The SABR Bulletin; “details more than 600 transactions and sets each in its historical perspective”—Sports Collectors Digest; “thoroughly researched, entertainly presented…wonderful”—Baseballology.