Trade talks in the 1980s were wild
We all know the basics of the story.
According to legend, Ryne Sandberg was the insisted upon prospect the team had to include to send Larry Bowa to Chicago. Sandberg was a top prospect in the Phillies’ minor league system in the late 1970s after being drafted in 20th round in the 1978 draft. A quick mover, he made it to then Triple-A affiliate Oklahoma City in 1981, being one of the younger players in spring training camp that year to open some eyes and give the team some players that apparently made other teams wish they had him as well.
“Damn right,” said superscout Hugh Alexander. “I got a call from a scout from another organization the other day and he said ‘I hear you got some pretty good kids over there.’ I told him ‘We’ve got the best kids in baseball right now.’ And I truly believe it.” 1
However, there was another young player in their organization that had a brighter future in their eyes at the same position that Sandberg played, shortstop, and his name was Julio Franco. Viewed as one of the top prospects in the game, the team did not wish to block Franco from eventually ascending to the majors with another young player in his way, so they eventually traded Sandberg to the Cubs.
The story of those negotiations is pretty fun.
All Larry Bowa wanted was to have his promise kept.
He felt like he was a major part of the Phillies championship team in 1980 and he wanted to be compensated as such. The 1981 season, disrupted by a player’s strike in the middle, saw the Phillies reach the playoffs, but get summarily bounced by the upstart Montreal Expos in a makeshift divisional series between the two winners of the “halves” of the season. Owner Ruly Carpenter, unable and unwilling to keep up with the salaries being asked for by this newfangled contraption called “free agency”, sold the team to a group led by Bill Giles, who them installed himself as team president. With that new president coming in and wanting to make sure that the bottom line was always within eye sight, the negotiations with the shortstop to keep him in Philadelphia until the next wave of prospects could arrive weren’t going well. In late December 1981, Giles talked about the core of the team and conspicuously left someone out.
“My philosophy is the four or five key guys – like [Pete] Rose and Scmitty and [Steve] Carlton and [Gary] Matthews – you have to take care of them. But we’re going to have to have tougher negotiations with some of those other people down the road or we just can’t make it financially.” 2
“Those people.”
For a guy like Bowa, loyal to a fault to the franchise, those words had to have stung. Looking at the negotiations with a 2025 lens, it made sense. At the time, Bowa was 36 years old and his bat, though never one that contained much thump (that wasn’t his game), wasn’t exactly one that inspired confidence that it would remain productive. He was still considered one of the better defensive shortstops in the game, but how much longer could a player, at that age, stay good in the field? Plus, with prospects like Franco and Sandberg behind him, it made sense to tell him that they were going in a different direction once his contract had expired.
But that’s not how baseball worked in those days. Contracts were given with a bit more reckless abandon to those that were veteran leadership, players that were proven on the field. No one was concerned or even aware with the term “future value.” Someone like Bowa was seen as a desirable asset and not giving him a contract to keep his Phillies’ tenure going was crazy. So, something had to happen.
Ryne Sandberg was a player that was going to be moved. The team had players in his spot for 1982, Bowa at shortstop and Manny Trillo at second base. For a team like the Phillies, one that still believed they had the winning mix offensively to make it back to the World Series, trying to send a top prospect like Sandberg to another destination in exchange for pitching help made sense.
Baseball hasn’t changed all that much. Pitching is still the best way to win a championship and the Phillies after the 1981 season needed pitching. They still had Carlton atop the rotation, but he was 36 years old that season and didn’t have much help in the rotation. Pitchers like Dick Ruthven (71 ERA+), Larry Christenson (103 ERA+), Nino Espinosa (60 ERA+) and Marty Bystrom (109 ERA+) were the future and that future looked bleak. Upgrades had to be made and Sandberg was one of the players the team was going to use to make that upgrade.
It started at the Winter Meetings that December. Rumors were heavy that the Phillies were making offers left and right to try and add to their rotation. In a time when general managers and team president were unusually frank with what they were offering, the trade offers they made were lopsided, “heavy, heavy offers” in the words of Giles. While researching this piece, these were the offers that were stated by someone from the team’s front office that involved Sandberg at those Winter Meetings:
- Sandberg, Marty Bystrom, Don McCormack to the Brewers for Mike Caldwell
- Sandberg, Dick Ruthven to the Mets for Mike Scott, Jesse Orosco
- Sandberg and others to the Mariners for Floyd Bannister
Believe me when I tell you: these were big deals at the time. There was a lot of hyperbole being thrown around the newspaper pages about the players the Phillies wanted, as well as the players the Phillies were willing to part with.
Now, a lot of this is surprising since, according to Giles, Sandberg was considered an “untouchable” for the 1982 season.
“We just think he’s too good,” [Giles] said. “Everybody wants him, but he’s too good.” 3
He was clearly a prospect on the ladder coming up, but it just seemed like the team couldn’t play him, either at second or as the shortstop. Common sense again tells us that they should use that player to shore up other spots, so if a pitcher was available for the deal, the Phillies should take it. There wasn’t a lack of effort on the team’s part. There just wasn’t anyone to dance with just yet since people didn’t want to trade the players the Phillies were looking to acquire. So, a trade would have to wait.
Over Christmas in 1981, there was much back and forth between the team (Giles, mostly) and Bowa about that three-year deal that the shortstop desired. According to reports at the time, the old owner in Carpenter had made a handshake promise that if there wasn’t an extension on the horizon, a trade would be worked out to a team that would express that desire. With Giles, it was clear that he had no desire to pay him and, during the meetings at least, there was no deal to be made.
Bill Giles went on a vacation sometime after the New Year and when he returned, he returned to the same questions about Bowa that remained when he left. The team wasn’t going to pay him long-term and Bowa wanted security for his (theoretical) final years or a trade to a different organization.
“Nobody is knocking down the door to get Larry Bowa,” Giles said. “If we can’t get value for him, I guess I’ll have to sit down with him and see what we can do.” 4
Giles was trying to make a move where he’d send the unhappy shortstop to the Cubs in return for Ivan de Jesus, but that the Cubs wanted too much. A straight up deal was simply not sufficient to seal the deal. And if they were looking to move Bowa somewhere else, well, that wasn’t happening either. The team could try and make a trade, but as is quoted, there just wasn’t a partner to be had.
Unless…
It was mid January. The impasse between the team and Bowa still stood: they weren’t paying him and he wanted a trade.
Then along came Dallas.
Dallas Green, the manager of the 1980 world champion Phillies, had moved on to be the general manager of the Cubs. He was looking for a shortstop for his 1982 Cubs even though he already had one in de Jesus. Larry Bowa might be a fit, but as a straight up trade? No chance. In early January though, there were whispers that a deal was in place, one that would send Bowa, Luis Aguayo and Dick Davis to the Windy City in exchange for de Jesus, Bill Caudill and one more player. In Bowa’s mind, it was all but done. 5 The issue was: Green hadn’t heard anything about it.
“We haven’t even talked any particulars,” Green said, “beyond whether I’d be interested in Bowa and whether I would talk about de Jesus.”
There were even rumors springing up about the trade to send Bowa to the Cubs would be expanded to include the White Sox in a three-way deal, one in which Bowa would still have been sent to the Cubs and de Jesus would have been sent to Philadelphia, but that rumor was squashed just as quickly as it started. Instead, the rumor mill kept churning and the standstill kept standing. A standoff occurred every day for the next three weeks. Articles are dotted with mentions of “we’re still working on it” and “we’ll see what happens” if talk of a Bowa trade was brought up. Whatever was being said in public, there was some clear backroom chatter occurring, likely the two teams, the Phillies and Cubs, negotiating on what the final price would end up being.
Finally, at the end of the month, the deal that was being worked on to finally end the Bowa-Phillies relationship for good came to fruition. A trade was made, one that changed the course of the franchise for the worse for the foreseeable future.
Larry Bowa was sent to the Cubs, along with Ryne Sandberg on January 28, 1982 in exchange for Ivan de Jesus. Bowa got his trade (and his contract extension), the Phillies got their cost controlled shortstop in de Jesus….and the Cubs stole a future Hall of Famer.
The immediate quote from Green about Sandberg are interesting. Prior to the deal being official, Green talked about Sandberg and how he might end up being something other than second baseman.
The consensus opinion of both clubs is that Sandberg has outgrown shortstop and has a future at third, center or right…[s]o, Green sees three potential ways he could find a spot for Sandberg. “He doesn’t figure to be playing any of those positions for a few years down the road in Philadelphia,” Dallas said. 6
Interesting how things played out, huh?
Immediately, the trade wasn’t one that was popular, but not due to the inclusion of Sandberg. Remember, Bowa was still liked in the clubhouse and amongst the fanbase as well and people didn’t really care for prospects like they do now. The players on the field, the ones they could go see when they went to a major league stadium, those were the players that were popular. A prospect in faraway Oklahoma City didn’t matter. Most thought of Sandberg as a mere throw-in, but at least one player knew already that perhaps the Phillies had made a mistake.
“I don’t understand the trade,” [Bowa] said yesterday, expressing one last opinion that Bill Giles won’t like. “I think De Jesus is a good shortstop, but, to me, the trade doesn’t make much sense. Giving up me for him – that would make a lot more sense. But when you throw in a top prospect like Ryne Sandberg…” 7
Foreshadowing at its finest.
Of course, as we now know, Sandberg would go on to have a career that ended with his being inducted into Cooperstown. At the time of the deal, most people in Chicago were picking him to be their starting center fielder, his athleticism being a huge draw for Green and then manager Lee Elia. Yet once the season started, he settled in at second base and had a solid rookie season, finishing sixth in Rookie of the Year voting.
The regret felt by Phillies management was immediate and palpable. In 1984, trading Sandberg was “the dumbest thing I’ve done since buying the franchise,” according to Giles. It had become apparent that the Cubs, Dallas Green in particular, fleeced the Phillies. Once the MVP award was hoisted by the second baseman, the failure was complete. A potential cornerstone had been moved as a tagged on piece in a trade that, at the time, made at least some sense. The team didn’t want to pay Bowa with a shortstop prospect coming up and had grown tired of his desire for a contract extension. They traded for a shortstop that would help bide their time for that prospect while also not costing as much money. It’s the kind of trade that perhaps a lot of teams would make today.
It’s the inclusion of Sandberg that stings to this day.
It’s a different time and place in baseball nowadays. Prospects and their coveted team control are things that rule negotiations during trade talks. Including a top prospect in a deal where teams traded players that were virtually the same would get an executive fired today. Yet back then, sending Sandberg to the Cubs wasn’t seen as a franchise altering move. It was just another piece of the business.
For the Phillies, it wasn’t that way.
It was another in scrapheap of “why did they do that?” moves that litter the floor of the team’s history.
1 Conlin, Bill. “Bowa Won’t Whine over Earnest Julio.” Philadelphia Daily News, 13 Mar. 1981, p. 76.
2 Dolson, Frank. “Bowa Doing a Not-So-Slow Burn about Phillies’ Breach of Faith.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 23 Dec. 1981, p. 39.
3 Stark, Jayson. “Six-Player Offer Fails to Land Phils a Pitcher.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 Dec. 1981, pp. 4–C.
4 Conlin, Bill. “Giles Ready to Get back to Work.” Philadelphia Daily News, 22 Jan. 1982, p. 84.
5 Stark, Jayson. “Bowa Set to Pack His Bags for Chicago.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 Jan. 1982, pp. C–1.
6 Conlin, Bill. “Will Youth Be Served by Phils?” Philadelphia Daily News, 27 Jan. 1982, p. 71.
7 Dolson, Frank. “In Bowa’s View, Deal Is Dandy.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 Jan. 1982, pp. 4–D.