Dealing with being dealt.(baseball player trading)(Brief Article)

There are times and dates that alter your life forever. The day you graduate from high school, the day you get married, the day your kids are born and so on. It's the same in baseball. The day you get drafted, the day you get to the big leagues, the day you get traded and so on.

I've been traded before, but not during the season, not to help another team out right now. The trade deadline called me out of the sea of players, and the Twins thought I could help them. So I was traded July 29 for Mark Redman, a young lefthanded starting pitcher.

Every trade has different undercurrents. I had lost my job in Detroit, and I will be a free agent at year's end, so all the writing was on the wall. It was tough. The last month was like being on life support. I was going to get traded, but Gar--manager Phil Garner--did everything he could do to make the last month comfortable for me. It was like I was still part of the team, but the guys would always say, "Are you still here?"

I guess they didn't know what else to say. So when the call came, it was almost a relief for both sides. Usually when you're traded, the G.M. calls you into the manager's office along with the pitching coach and the assistant G.M. When that happened, I thanked them for giving me the opportunity to pitch and to develop, and I thanked them for calling me in and telling me because when you get dealt you can go different ways. At least they called me in, and it was nice and professional.

After you hear you get traded, the first thing you do is tell your family, and then you call the G.M. of the other team. After I talked to Twins G.M. Terry Ryan, I was excited. It was like a new start, a new lease on life.

The Twins were in Seattle, so Ryan told me to ...