GMs tell their best (and wildest) trade stories: 'Uncle Mike would have absolutely loved that you executed a trade at his funeral'

From births to funerals -- and everywhere in between -- the job of a major league baseball general manager is never done. That is especially the case this time of year, when talks heat up in advance of the July 31 MLB trade deadline.

Calls and texts can come at the most inopportune times for front office members, but that doesn't mean they're going to go unanswered. After all, there's always another team willing to do a deal.

With that in mind, we asked MLB executives to tell us their favorite trade stories.

Trade talks at the most inopportune times

'We went back and looked at the time stamp of when he had sent texts and when the baby was born'

Brewers general manager Matt Arnold and Dodgers president Andrew Friedman worked together in the Tampa Bay Rays front office before moving on to their current jobs. Arnold was an assistant to Friedman, who was the executive vice president of baseball operations.

"We had two different trade deadlines with Andrew in the hospital," Arnold recalled. "One year his appendix almost burst. He was doubled over in a lot of pain and we ended up having the doctor come to the stadium."

Friedman was rushed to the hospital, where the Rays staff spent the trade deadline trying to work out deals while their front office leader was undergoing treatment for appendicitis.

"We spent July 31 at the hospital with him, medicated, going in and out of consciousness," Arnold said. "We're trying to piece together conversations we've had with him as he's in a lot of pain. That was pretty nuts. BJ Upton was involved, but I don't think we ended up trading him."

Arnold believes his second Friedman in-the-hospital trade story tops even a deadline-day emergency appendix removal.

"Something like the next year, he's at the hospital because his wife is in labor," Arnold said. "She had a baby on the trade deadline."

With the team involved in several trade scenarios and the deadline fast approaching, Rays staff members were texting with Friedman the entire time.

"We went back and looked at the time stamp of when he had sent texts and when the baby was born," Arnold said with a laugh. "It was minutes apart. So we asked him what was going on in there?"

"He said she was kind of propped up, and behind her head, he was texting stuff about the trade. We were like 'Welcome to the world, Zach Friedman.'"

'My phone is ringing at the funeral now'

White Sox general manager Chris Getz loved his Uncle Mike. So when his uncle died during the offseason, Getz made sure to attend the funeral and even was asked to be a pallbearer. But on the day of the proceedings, the White Sox top decision-maker's phone was buzzing.

"There's a GM out there who if there is interest, he doesn't stop calling," Getz recalled. "So I told him my uncle had passed away and I have his funeral, but don't worry, we're going to do the deal. I'm not going anywhere other than the fact that I'm a pallbearer at my uncle's funeral. I need a couple hours. He says, 'Cool, I got you.'"

The funeral started, but the calls didn't stop.

"My phone is ringing at the funeral now," Getz said. "It wasn't actually ringing when I was carrying the casket, but it was close enough. I told people at the celebration afterwards what was going on and they were like 'Hey Chris, Uncle Mike would have absolutely loved that you executed a trade at his funeral."

'I'm literally going from the church to the graveyard, on the phone trying to get us $500,000'

Getz isn't the only executive who has needed to tend to work matters during a family funeral. New San Francisco Giants GM Zack Minasian had a similar experience after his grandmother died last offseason.

"It was this past January. I had to find us $500,000 of international money," Minasian said. "I'm literally going from the church to the graveyard, on the phone trying to get us $500,000. It was not my best day. And it's the same church my grandmother got married in. I had my brother [Perry] next to me as I'm trying to hide my phone. He was driving so I could text."

Zack's older brother is the GM of the Angels, but it wasn't Perry he was working to acquire the international bonus money.

"I got $250,000 from the Red Sox for Blake Sabol and $250,000 from the Marlins for Will Kempner," Minasian said. "I got it done."

Minasian was asked why not just ask his brother for it. He was sitting right next to him.

"Shocker. He didn't have it!" the younger Minasian said with a laugh.

'I'm feeling the texts coming through in my pocket'

Another executive, who was willing to tell his story as long as his name wasn't used, remembers navigating a Passover seder while trying to pull off a minor deal.

"I was at my in-laws' temple's seder," the executive said. "Not a fancy, formal one, but still. I'm feeling the texts coming through in my pocket."

At one point, he excused himself to go to the bathroom. That allowed the trade to move closer to the finish line -- but it wasn't done yet.

"I was trying to be respectful, not checking the phone," the executive said. "But at one point, one of my kids needed to go to the bathroom and my hand shot up. I said, "I'll take him.'"

"I ran out in the hall and took him to the bathroom and real quick called the other team to get the ball rolling. It definitely wasn't easy, but we got the deal done."

Communication issues

'I knew I was going to lose cell service'

A few days before Christmas during the 2022 offseason, Arizona Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen was in the midst of a family vacation in Hawaii -- and also working the phones for a major trade during what is usually a rare quiet stretch for MLB execs.

Executives never know exactly when a deal is going to line up, but Hazen had a feeling he might be caught in a tough spot being so far from his home base.

"I was trying to finalize the Daulton Varsho/Gabriel Moreno/Lourdes Gurriel trade [with the Blue Jays]," Hazen said. "I talked to Cash [Brian Cashman] in the morning, I talked to another team later, and I finalized the deal with Ross [Atkins] right before we were supposed to go zip lining that day.

"I was with my kids. We are driving to the middle of nowhere in Maui, and I knew I was going to lose cell service. We have a time slot for the zip lining we have to get to. I had my oldest kid driving and I was trying to get a hold of Varsho to tell him about the trade and I couldn't. And we were getting closer and closer to the abyss, knowing I was going to lose service."

Hazen couldn't find Varsho anywhere and was told the outfielder could be "in a tree hunting somewhere." This put Hazen in a time crunch to inform the player he would be included in a deal, but eventually he got a hold of him to tell him of the trade. Now he wanted to talk with the guys he was acquiring.

"When we get to the bottom of the gully, there is no cell service, so I'm hoping the zip line company has Wi-Fi to use," Hazen said. "And they were like 'The Wi-Fi just went down.' I could not believe it. So I had not talked to Gurriel or Moreno yet. So I drop the kids off at the zip line and tell them I'll be back when I can, and I drive back to the closest town so I could get cell service."

Hazen sat at a restaurant, called his players and then headed back to his kids.

"They were halfway through zip lining," Hazen said. "They didn't mind. At least, I don't think so."

'He whipped the phone to me and he said, "Finish the Roberts deal"'

Current Cubs president Jed Hoyer was a young executive with the Boston Red Sox in 2004, working under GM Theo Epstein during a tumultuous trade deadline.

Boston was seemingly having talks with everyone in the league, eventually trading star shortstop Nomar Garciaparra to the Cubs in a blockbuster, four-team trade. The team was also trying to trade for a base-stealing player named Dave Roberts.

"Theo was trying to finish the Nomar deal on like an old-school phone," Hoyer said. "At one point, he whipped the phone to me and he said, 'Finish the Roberts deal.' But I couldn't understand [Dodgers GM] Paul DePodesta on the phone. It was a choppy connection."

After Hoyer hung up, Epstein asked him if he got the deal done.

"I just looked at him and said, 'I think so?' with a shrug," Hoyer said with a laugh. "I think we're good, but not sure."

Hoyer noted what that trade led to: a curse-breaking title in Boston and newfound fame for Roberts, whose crucial stolen base during Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS will live forever in Red Sox lore.

"And now he might be a Hall of Fame manager," Hoyer said. "Glad it worked out."

'All of a sudden the skies open up, it's pouring, and I can't hear on my cell phone'

In July 2009, St. Louis Cardinals executive John Mozeliak was getting ready to play golf when trade talks began to heat up.

"I wasn't a golfer but I got invited by a friend to play at St. Louis Country club," Mozeliak recalled.

The calls he was getting came from Oakland GM Billy Beane with the two sides discussing a deal involving slugger Matt Holliday.

"All of a sudden the skies open up, it's pouring, and I can't hear on my cell phone," Mozeliak said. "It was just disastrous. And by the way, I only played three holes because my phone was just blowing up."

Mozeliak headed back to his car -- to stay dry and find some quiet. And also to avoid trouble at the club.

"I ended up having to call our Double-A manager to get his opinion on a couple of players that were going to Oakland, trying to orchestrate all of this at a very exclusive country club where you're not supposed to be on your cell phone," Mozeliak said. "I'm sitting in my car getting pelted by small hailstones and rain."

The conversation carried on through dinner time, when Mozeliak was due to be with his and his friend's family.

"We're having dinner at Dewey's Pizza, which is a local pizzeria in New City," he said. "And so there I'm having to just not focus on this family dinner. I already missed 15 holes of golf, but by the time that dinner ended, we had a deal and we got Matt Holiday."

With the help of their new slugger, the Cardinals went on to win 91 games and the NL Central.

"You're not in your office, you're not in your normal environment to do it but we were able to complete it and obviously the rest was history when it came to having Holliday."

When chaos reigns

'We had to tell Drew he was going to be traded -- but not for two weeks'

In July 2012, current Cubs GM Carter Hawkins was an assistant in Cleveland.

"We were about to trade Alex White, Drew Pomeranz and two other players to Colorado for pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez," Hawkins said.

After the deal was complete, Hawkins was dispatched to the farm team in Akron to inform the players they were being dealt.

"Pomeranz was starting," Hawkins said. "We had to go get him out of the bullpen and tell him. But there was some miscommunication and Jimenez was still in the game for the Rockies that day so the trade was on hold. So we brought them all back in to tell them they weren't being traded."

Eventually, Jimenez was pulled from the game and was told he was going to Cleveland.

"So we brought all the guys back in to tell them they were being traded, including Pomeranz. Then we realize it had not been a calendar year since the day Pomeranz had signed and that used to be a rule. You could not trade a drafted player within that first year of his signing. So now we had to tell Drew he was going to be traded -- but not for two weeks. By that time, his head was spinning."

'All he said was "No, I don't want to trade him." No reason. Just "No!" I couldn't believe it'

Jim Duquette and Mike Flanagan were the co-GMs of the Baltimore Orioles in 2006 and the duo were working hard on a July deal involving slugger Miguel Tejada after getting permission from ownership to trade him.

"We spent like 16-hour days sorting through the level of interest," Duquette recalled. "We had it narrowed down to three teams. The Mets, Astros and Angels. I mean we worked hard on this deal."

The duo determined the Angels had the best offer.

"It was a significant trade," Duquette said. "We had a chance to get Bartolo Colon and Erick Aybar or even Ervin Santana. It would have changed our organization."

When they were ready, Duquette and Flanagan marched down to owner Peter Angelos' law office to present the offers and their suggestions to him.

"I had a whiteboard," Duquette explained. "We put down all of the names on it. It was a whole elaborate presentation to Peter. We're up against the deadline. We sat there for 30 minutes going through all the options.

"At the end of it, he pauses, looks up at us both and all he said was 'No, I don't want to trade him.' No reason. Just 'No!' I couldn't believe it."

A few years later, Duquette had a laugh at his cousin Dan's expense when nearly the same thing happened to him. In 2017, the Cubs and Astros were both vying to trade with Baltimore for reliever Zack Britton. Dan was now the Orioles' general manager and was fielding offers.

"Theo [Epstein] opted out of the running for Britton," Duquette recalled. "He didn't want to wait around for Peter [Angelos]. The Astros rolled the dice and waited. And Peter said no to that too. They got stuck with nobody. If you remember, one of their players even criticized ownership for doing nothing but that's only because Angelos said no at the last minute."

'Frankly, we got that done well after the deadline'

In 2008, Hoyer's Red Sox were looking to move on from Manny Ramirez, who wanted out of Boston.

"Manny was really disgruntled about his contract," Hoyer said. "He had two club options with no buyouts. He was forcing his way out. We felt like we had to do the deal."

The deal was "convoluted," according to Hoyer, because it involved multiple teams as the clock was ticking down on deadline day.

"It looked like it was never going to get done," Hoyer said. "It was a last-second three-team deal. That was the most confusing one because there were so many cooks in the kitchen. At one point, the Marlins were involved with a young Mike Stanton."

In the end, the Red Sox, Pirates and Dodgers pulled off the three-teamer, which sent Ramirez to Los Angeles and outfielder Jason Bay back to Boston while the Pirates got four prospects.

"Frankly, we got that done well after the deadline," Hoye stated. "That was the most manic and confusing one."

When the trade goes through -- for better or worse

'We didn't know we were getting a star'

In 2012, Jerry Dipoto was in his first full year as GM of the Los Angeles Angels. He had a good team with All-Star hitters and top-of-the-rotation pitchers, but his bullpen really struggled early in the season.

"May is a difficult time to make any meaningful trades," Dipoto said. "And we didn't have a burgeoning farm system to deal from either. But we were able to acquire Ernesto Frieri from the Padres. He was like fourth or fifth on the Pads depth chart."

Frieri was out of options so the Padres didn't mind moving him.

"He was like a 1.5-pitch type of reliever," Dipoto said. "We got him for two prospects: second baseman Alexi Amarista and minor league pitcher Donn Roach."

The Angels were immediately impressed with their new reliever.

"He played catch down the line the first day and our pitching coach was like 'Wow, you can't pick up this guy's ball at all,'" Dipoto recalled. "He threw a scoreless inning that night and the next night he was closing."

Frieri ripped off 20 scoreless innings to begin his Angels career and was a finalist to make the All-Star team.

"I distinctly remember [scout] Charlie Kerfeld asking me how I pulled that one off. It's so hard to do it in May. We didn't know we were getting a star."

'He threw out a slew of names and said, "We will overpay"'

Trader Jerry, as Dipoto is known, was at it again during the shortened 2020 season, now working for the Mariners. And again, it was the Padres on the other end of the phone. San Diego had a really good team and was looking for some specific help.

"They were trying to fortify and they needed a catcher," Dipoto said. "We had Austin Nola, who was going bananas for us in that short season."

Nola was hitting .306 with a 151 OPS+ when AJ Preller called Dipoto.

"We were in full rebuild mode but didn't have much interest in moving him, simply because it's a tough position to fill and he's a great makeup guy," Dipoto said.

But Preller wouldn't take no for an answer.

"He threw out a slew of names and said, 'We will overpay,'" Dipoto recalls. "AJ is that way."

In return, the Mariners received four players, including Ty France -- but it was a second, late trade that year with San Diego that Dipoto liked even more. The Padres wanted reliever Taylor Williams.

"After doing the first deal, we're inside of 10 minutes until the deadline," Dipoto said. "We've asked for a number of mainstream players. They said no. But they had a guy in their farm system who had thrown one inning as a minor leaguer after being drafted the previous year. Then COVID hit. That was Matt Brash. We were so close to the deadline that I heard AJ cup the phone and yell 'BRASH?' to one of his assistants. Then he gets back on and says, 'We'll do it.'

"It's the only deal I've ever done without seeing the medicals. There was no time. But Brash has been good for us."

'To this day, I don't think Kazmir knows the full story of why we traded him'

When asked about his most interesting deals, Duquette immediately thought of the oft-discussed trade of prospect Scott Kazmir during his time as GM of the Mets -- with some insight even hard-core Mets fans may not know.

In July 2004, Duquette traded Kazmir to the then-Tampa Bay Devil Rays for starter Victor Zambrano. But few knew that an off-the-field sponsorship would have a lasting impact on the deal.

"A lot of it centered on the medical," Duquette said. "He [Kazmir] was high risk."

Kazmir was a first-round pick, but the Mets were worried about his health from the time they drafted him on. They did the deal after clearing Zambrano of any medical concerns of his own. And that backfired on them.

"It didn't help that we had an inexperienced ortho group that had just started overseeing our entire medical staff in 2003, after their hospital had signed a multiyear sponsorship deal with the organization," Duquette said. "The ultimate irony is Kazmir never got injured while Zambrano was cleared and got injured after three starts. It was a double whammy."

Zambrano missed the rest of 2004 but was healthy in 2005 before undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2006. Kazmir eventually did get hurt but first provided the Rays and later the Angels with several productive seasons before needing Tommy John surgery in 2011.

"To this day, I don't think Kazmir knows the full story of why we traded him," Duquette said.

When the deal falls apart

'For an hour we thought we were getting Felix Hernandez'

Before joining the Giants in 2018, Zack Minasian spent 14 years in the Brewers. During one of his seasons under GM Doug Melvin, the team thought it had a deal for one of the game's top pitchers.

Milwaukee was deep in conversations with the Seattle Mariners, who had a former Brewers executive, Jack Zduriencik, serving as GM.

"Jack and Doug were talking about a trade that would have sent Felix Hernandez to Milwaukee," Minasian recalled. "At one point, we thought Jack had agreed to it but he needed to make one other move before we could finalize it.

"It didn't happen, but for an hour we thought we were getting Felix Hernandez. We were nervous, anxious, excited and just waiting."

That is not the only time a trade that failed to come to fruition created a memory for Minasian. After a trade with the Mets involving Wilmer Flores and Zack Wheeler fell through, Minasian ended up at a bar while the front office was looking at other potential deals.

"One of my friends owned a place in Milwaukee," he said. "I got a call from Doug while I was there and I had to go in the basement of the bar where all the liquor is being stored, huddled in the back corner, going through Astros prospects.

"You have to do what you have to do, right?"

'We don't get Gallen if we make that trade'

Sometimes a trade that fell through can turn out to be a blessing in disguise for a team. Hazen remembers such a trade during his second trade deadline as Diamondbacks GM.

As trade season heated up, Arizona was running neck and neck with the Los Angeles Dodgers in a battle for the top spot in the National League and the teams were among the top suitors for the prize of the deadline: Baltimore star Manny Machado, who was set to hit free agency after the season.

Ultimately, Machado went to the Dodgers and L.A. won the NL West and reached the World Series. But the ripple effects of Arizona not landing Machado, helped the D-backs make a World Series appearance of their own in 2023.

"We tried to get Manny Machado from the Orioles in 2018 and Jazz Chisolm would have been in that trade," Hazen said. "We didn't trade Jazz there but that got us Zac Gallen in 2019. We don't get Gallen if we make that trade for Machado, so you never know."