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Cutch rumors stir Robinson flashback
- Updated: December 15, 2016
For now, Andrew McCutchen is still with the Pirates.
But as rumors of a trade involving the five-time All-Star swirled around last week’s Winter Meetings a flashback to 1965 put an uncanny comparison in focus.
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A week after I returned from the Winter Meetings that year, on Dec. 9, the Reds dealt All-Star outfielder Frank Robinson to the Orioles.
As I sat among reporters during the O’s press conference in Baltimore, we all shook our heads. It was shocking; we wondered what prompted Reds general manager Bill DeWitt Sr. to make the deal. It seemed so one-sided.
Groundwork for the trade was made at the Winter Meetings between DeWitt and Orioles executive Frank Cashen. The O’s were elated.
Robinson, like McCutchen is now, was 30. DeWitt said Robinson had reached his peak and was “not a young 30.”
During 10 seasons with the Reds, Robinson had become one of the most feared hitters — and baserunners — in the National League. He won the NL Most Valuable Player Award in 1961, when he hit .323 with 37 homers and 124 RBIs. The Reds won the NL pennant before losing to the Yankees in the World Series that year.
Yet even though Robinson — the best run producer in Reds history — hit 33 homers and drove in 113 runs in 1965, he was dispatched to Baltimore for pitchers Milt Pappas and Jack Baldshun and outfielder Dick Simpson. Pappas was with the Reds for only three seasons, while Baldschun and Simpson lasted just two summers.
“I was devastated,” Robinson told me. “I was with the organization that signed me, had put in 10 years at the Major League level. I was thinking I’d spend my entire career with the Reds. I was happy and comfortable in Cincinnati. That might have been one bad thing: I was comfortable.”
McCutchen, 2013 NL MVP, has established himself as one of baseball’s top players. Prior to 2016, he was batting .298 and averaging 22 homers, 80 RBIs and 22 steals.
Last season, …
