Remembering Dayton Moore's First Deadline: An Irrelevant Perspective

The calendar moves faster each year, doesn't it?

I remember the first deadline of the Dayton Moore Era well. It was 2006, and this site was just starting to find a handful (literally) of readers. Still, we were all kinda figuring things out back then. In 2006, the Trade Deadline was just starting to become an online event. MLB Trade Rumors had only just launched, no one was on Twitter, and the big box sports sites were still trying to figure out how to post rumors and updated information. This rumor you have is two sentences long and is going to be irrelevant in two hours, why should we publish it? Not to sound like an old man, but a lot of things we take for granted now weren't quite in place four or five years ago. Back in those days, everything on the internet, amongst fans, was second-hand material from TV and radio. People heard stuff on TV somewhere, and then it made its way to message boards. At least that's how I remember it.

By the time we got to the deadline day in 2006, Dayton had already made four moves. Between July 19th and July 25th, Dayton shipped out Ruben Gotay, Mike MacDougal, Elmer Dessens and Tony Graffanino. There was a general expectation that more moves were coming, you know, given that Moore was brand new GM and the roster was terrible, yet somehow had a number of "name" players. Around 11 AM that day I decided to put up a post, wondering what was going on. With an hour or so left, Matt Stairs was traded and right at the wire, the big Affeldt/Shealy trade ended up coming out after the deadline had passed. It still amazes me how wrong everyone was about that trade.

Back in those days, SB Nation couldn't really handle sudden surges in traffic. I think the network crashed every year on the trade deadline until 2007 or 2008, and it definitely did in 2006. Then again, I remember even sites like ESPN and Fox Sports getting really slow and wonky that day.

I feel a little misty thinking about that day actually. I was spending the summer in DC with my girlfriend, trying to be a productive grad student. It was our first time living together, and while she was doing your typical DC summer intern stuff, I was walking to the Georgetown U. library each day, trying to write an article. That was the idea. Of course, I wasn't very productive, and by the end of July, the pressure was really on. On deadline day, I'd carried my laptop to the library (it was about a mile walk) and setup in a carrel to work. The network was up and down, which gave me a clue that maybe I should be writing about this stuff more but also left me no way of doing so.

Since then, I've gone through the whole building up to propose, being engaged for a year, getting married, cycle. I've moved like eight times. I've gone through the grad school exams process, proposed a dissertation topic, and, next week, I'll mail off a final draft.

Same GM, different vets.