Baseball Meat Market: The Stories Behind the Best and Worst Trades in History

Shawn Krest is an incredible and gripping sportswriter who shares a detailed narrative behind the best and worst MLB player trades in history. Few topics of baseball can get fans as easily riled up as trades, and any baseball fan will spout words of rage or thrill at the big blockbuster ones. However, reviewing those mismatch trades is a little like judging the best home runs by how far they went. Instead of only focusing on the first-round knockouts, this book deals with the 12-round title fights of baseball trades. The best trades are the ones that changed the history of the sport. The worst ones didn’t just get a GM fired-they cost a city its team. In this book, readers get a bird’s eye view of these most important trades and how they shaped baseball into what it is today.

Shawn Krest, award-winning sportswriter for the ACC Sports Journal, CBS Sports, ESPN and the MLB official website, writes in the book’s introduction, To fully understand a trade, we must peek inside the front office, listen to the phone calls and read the texts. We must look through the scouting reports and see who’s thought to be losing a step, and who might be able to extend his career if we move him to the bullpen. We need to check the locker room for cancers. Then we need to make a choice-Scott Pose, Tom Marsh or that kid from the Reds? There have been times when it was done better than anyone else. There have also been times where someone wishes he could take it all back-along with his job. Readers get the inside scoop on what was, what wasn’t and what could have been. For any serious fan of the great sport of baseball, all the excitement and history is right here in the Baseball Meat Market.