The End Of July Ain't What It Used To Be

As much as we might try, we can't muster up much enthusiasm for the trading deadline this year, which is in week. No matter scenarios they give us, we just don't believe anyone too huge will end up switching teams. The days of the Mark McGwire, Mike Piazza trades seem over. (Not that we ever considered the Piazza trade "the trade of the century.")

The names bantered about are mostly middling; Adam Dunn, Jermaine Dye, Tadahito Iguchi, maybe Jason Isringhausen ... nothing all that life-changing. We remember working at The Sporting News in 1998, when the deadline was at midnight, and all us Web people had to stay up all night waiting for the big trade to go down. (It did: Randy Johnson went to the Astros.) But that doesn't happen so often anymore. Some blame sandwich picks, which makes sense. We still blame the Nomar Garciaparra trade to the Cubs. That turned out the exact opposite of how we thought it would, and it took a lot of the air out of our bubble. And now look at Nomar; dude can barely walk.

How Sandwiches Ruined July [Bugs And Cranks] Deadline Analysis [FoxSports]