Roberto Kelly

Roberto Kelly was a legitimately good player. Say that part first, because history has flattened him into a footnote, and he deserves better than that. From 1989 through 1992, Kelly was the New York Yankees' everyday center fielder during some genuinely bad Yankees teams (we're talking a last-place, 95-loss outfit in 1990, then a 91-loss follow-up in 1991), and he was one of the only reasons to actually watch those teams. Then, on November 3, 1992, Gene Michael traded him to Cincinnati for a 29-year-old outfielder with a mediocre batting average and a bad attitude toward Gatorade coolers. You know how that one turned out.

The Kid Who Could Do Everything

Kelly debuted in 1987 at 22, got semi-regular reps in '88, and then broke out for real in 1989, hitting .302 with a .786 OPS in 137 games. By 1990 he was an every-day fixture, and that season is the one Yankees old-timers still bring up (usually right before they bring up the trade): .285 average, 15 homers, 32 doubles, 61 RBI, 42 stolen bases, all 162 games played. He was worth 5.5 WAR that year, the best single season of his Yankees career by that measure, and he did it as the best player on a team that lost 95 games. (Being the best player on the 1990 Yankees is a little like being the tallest guy at a jockey convention, but still. He was freakin' good that year, and he earned it.)

That same season, Kelly and Steve Sax both stole 40-plus bases -- a genuinely rare pairing for one roster, and proof the Yankees had actual team speed buried inside those lean, pre-dynasty years. Kelly followed it up with a 20-homer, 32-steal 1991, then made his first All-Star team in 1992. He was 28, athletic, durable, and homegrown. On paper, he was exactly the kind of player you build around.

The Trade

Which is why the deal stunned everybody. Gene Michael sent Kelly to Cincinnati for Paul O'Neill -- straight up, one outfielder for one outfielder, plus a minor-league first baseman named Joe DeBerry (not a pitcher, whatever you may have read elsewhere) who came to New York as a throw-in. Read that again: Kelly went to the Reds alone. The Yankees got O'Neill AND DeBerry. It was a two-for-one before O'Neill ever put on the pinstripes, and it still somehow looked like a loss for New York at the time.

Fans hated it. Michael himself only called it "a gamble," which tells you how little conviction anyone outside his own gut had in the swap. Kelly was younger, faster, and coming off an All-Star year. O'Neill was 29, hitting .246, and had a reputation as a good player who never quite broke out in Cincinnati. The O'Neill trade is remembered now as one of the most lopsided deals in franchise history, and it should be -- but it's worth remembering it didn't look that way on November 3, 1992. It looked like the Yankees panicking and giving up their best young player for a reclamation project.

O'Neill became a five-time All-Star, won a batting title, and was the emotional center of a dynasty. Kelly kept playing baseball for eight more years -- the Reds, then the Braves, Expos, Dodgers, Twins, Mariners, and Rangers (seven organizations after the trade, which is either impressive durability or a sign nobody could quite figure out what they had). He racked up over 1,330 career games and one more All-Star nod in 1993. He even came back to the Bronx for ten forgettable games in 2000, a nostalgia lap nobody outside his own family remembers. It wasn't a bad career. It just wasn't the career the guy on the other side of that trade went on to have.

None of that makes the trade any less lopsided in hindsight. It just means Roberto Kelly wasn't some replacement-level guy the Yankees got lucky ditching. He was a good player who ran into a better trade for the other team. That happens sometimes, even to good players. It just doesn't usually happen this badly.