Baseball's trade deadline has become an event unto its own. Twenty years ago, the deadline was there, but it certainly was not followed the way it is today. Heck, it wasn't followed to this degree five years ago. Is that a good thing? You decide.
Blogs have certainly added to the rumor mill. John Bonnes (Twins Geek) started blogging about eight years ago and was the first Twins blogger. I started my blog (SethSpeaks.net) just over seven years ago. MLB Trade Rumors blog came into existence a few years later and has taken over the role as the place to go for any and all rumors around baseball. They get their rumors from the sites of teams' beat writers, national scribes and credible bloggers.
And in the past two years, Twitter has taken over as the site most followed for rumors and trade information. The immediacy of Twitter, and how quickly information, factual or not, can spread is absolutely amazing.
Yet another example of that happened last night when a 'tweet' from a Detroit radio station indicated that a deal between the Twins and Mariners involving Cliff Lee was about done. The rumor spread like wild fire for the next hour. Meanwhile, beat writers and national scribes had to call all of their contacts to verify the legitimacy of the rumor.
In the end, it turned out to be more talk that fact. In fact, late last night, the Star Tribune's LaVelle E. Neal tweeted, "Nothing close on Lee. Twins source tells me. Still guessing that talks are fluid. "
Soon after, a report came out that the Twins had offered Aaron Hicks and Wilson Ramos to the Mariners for Lee. Jeff Fletcher of AOL Fanhouse said an "MLB source" provided that information.
So, how do we muddle through all of these rumors? That is all they are at this point. The reality is that until there is a trade (And I do believe that there very well could be), we will not know for sure. We can guess and argue over who it would take for the Twins to land Lee. We can discuss the value he would bring to the Twins. We can ask if anything shy of a World Series championship would be satisfactory if the Twins acquire Lee. And we can ask the age old question, "would you rather win a World Series once every dozen years and be non-competitive in between, or would you rather have a team that is competitive year in and year out?"
I think that the trade deadline brings out the best and the worst in some fans, in some who use social networking, some beat writers and some bloggers. One thing is for certain, it shows the passion that so many fans have for their team, and how much they want their favorite teams to succeed.
