True story. It’s so old school, it’s fantastic. There were always rumors of players being traded for a bucket of balls or a few bats, but this one is actually real. As FanHouse points out, John Odom was traded from the Calgary Vipers of the Golden Baseball League to the Laredo Broncos of the United League for 10 maple bats. The reasoning behind the trade is actually pretty funny. Apparently this Odom character had some legal infractions on his record that prevented the Vipers from getting him into Canada. They just gave up and decided to trade him away instead, getting 10 bats back in exchange.
This Vipers team also seems to be quite creative when it comes to dealmaking — they are said to have asked for blue chairs in exchange for a player when they were building a stadium. If their goal was to garner some publicity from this trade, they certainly succeeded. I won’t exactly be going out of my way to take a trip to Calgary so I can watch one of their games, but I certainly appreciate their creativity. And hey, at least Odom can keep his head high knowing that at least he’s worth the equivalent of $650 in baseball bats — that’s something to be proud of.
