I always wondered how the Boston Red Sox head office conversation went when they talked themselves into trading Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Now I know!

No.

"Getting to play for one team their entire (Major League) career is not something many players get to do," Ichiro said at a news conference. "Having that choice made me happy."

I wonder if he would want to go? He has a no trade deal where he can specify 10 teams he does NOT want to go to.

We're going to be paying him for a long time no matter what the case:

Deferred interest rate: 5.5
Deferred salary notes: $25000000 Million ($5000000 Million annually) deferred at 5.5% interest, reducing deal's average annual value to $16100000 Million (deferred money to be paid in annual installments Jan. 30 beginning year after his retirement).

oops, there are some extra zeros there!

Deferred interest rate: 5.5
Deferred salary notes: $25 Million ($5 Million annually) deferred at 5.5% interest, reducing deal's average annual value to $16.1 Million (deferred money to be paid in annual installments Jan. 30 beginning year after his retirement).

These kind of pieces are crunchier when solid possible deals are proposed. Sure, it'd be great to get some magic beans for the best player on the roster, but will they grow? Or rather, what could Z get in return for the one everyday player that makes this club a major league team? Minor league prospects? A young not-quite-yet star? Who needs Ichiro! enough to consider overpaying for him? Since he should be considered a player capable of excelling for another four years, and one who likes playing here, we ought to get extra for him if a deal is to be made. He's capable of still being stellar when the youth movement underway blooms, and that would be payoff for him and the fans alike. Finally, if a deal is to be made, let it not be with a northeast team, decades of having Seattle players sent there to shine is enough already.

What the Mariners really need is to trade owners. I am grateful Mr. Yamauchi stepped up and led the group that among other things prevented the Mariners from moving to Tampa Bay (where we've seen that Major League Baseball has been a total failure), but the Seattle Mariners are NOT Nintendo. A professional sports team does not benefit from being run with an eye toward saving pennies.

The M's need a Mark Cuban, a passionate baseball fan with a gigantic pile of money who wants more than anything to win a World Series (or three) and is willing to do or spend whatever it takes to make that happen. The only question is, who might that be?

Sorry Mike, but your idea stinks. You must have forgotten the 1980s Mariners--no chance, no hope, no fans. Yes, we can go back.

The "Trade Ichiro, Trade Felix" crowd forgets that without those two players, there is no good reason to go to the ballpark. You obviously think that thousands of people will keep coming to Safeco Field to watch Triple-A quality ballplayers scrimmage. Check with the folks in Cleveland on that.

Here's your Mariner Haiku for today:

Flashes of brilliance
Then fundamental failure
Another year lost

Mike,

Go back to teaching journalism but don't pretend you have any idea what's going on in baseball.

Do you seriously think that the NINTENDO Mariners would trade Ichiro ever? Nintendo would sooner kill the Wii before trading Ichiro. What we need to win a series is to wrest the team from the Nintendo destroyers and get rid of Armstrong and Lincoln... Then we might be getting somewhere...

Of course, the M's should trade Ichiro. They should have traded him years ago when he still had some trade value. I doubt they would get much of anything for him now, plus the M's would have to pay much of his salary while he was playing for a different team. Ichiro does absolutely nothing for the M's. How much worse could the Mariners possibly be than they are now, with Ichiro?

And, for the clowns lumping Felix in with Ichiro: Felix is a superstar, arguably the best pitcher in baseball last year. Ichiro is one of the most-overrated players in the history of Major League Baseball.

Felix is very young, and not making too much money. Ichiro is old and getting paid a ludicrously high salary.

Felix possibly has his best years ahead of him. Ichiro is way past his prime which was incredibly overrated.

There is absolutely zero comparison between Felix, who is the real deal, and Ichiro, who is not.

Felix could conceivably be part of a decent M's future. Ichiro has no future.

Alas, the M's management is not nearly intelligent enough to make any sort of decent trade, but if they could just fool some poor team into taking Ichiro off our hands, including a decent chunk of his salary, I say go for it.

Sorry Mike, but your idea stinks. You must have forgotten the 1980s Mariners--no chance, no hope, no fans. Yes, we can go back.

The "Trade Ichiro, Trade Felix" crowd forgets that without those two players, there is no good reason to go to the ballpark. You obviously think that thousands of people will keep coming to Safeco Field to watch Triple-A quality ballplayers scrimmage. Check with the folks in Cleveland on that.

Amen, to that brother. You don't trade your best assets. You get rid of the deadwood and replace it with a better asset. The Mariners seem to have a lot of AAA players on their roster, not major league ready ones.

Ichiro and Felix shouldn't go anywhere.

Lincoln - You are mostly right on Felix; totally wrong on Ichiro. It seems you have no fundamental understanding of the game of baseball.

You are scratching the surface with your comment on Mariner management. Perhaps both you and them share similar notions about what constitutes viable baseball players.

Trade Chone instead. Slide Ryan to third. Put Jack Wilson back at short. Bring up Ackley in May so he doesn't get his full season. Put Wilson in the 2 hole. Wilson is a guy who can always make contact and think more about the team than himself -- something nobody would ever say about Chone with a straight face.

This whole Chone think is as dumb an experiment as the whole infield swap thing the last two years.

Reasons this is a very bad idea:

1. The M's would get nowhere near enough in return; as much as I love Ichiro he's not a difference maker for a contending team.

2. The M's would still have to pay part of his salary to get anyone to make the deal.

3. The M's would lose one of the few reasons left to attend a game.

Otherwise, great idea, Mike!

This is what is wrong with professional sports - people support and even encourage players to think that their individual success is more important than being part of a team. The idea that Ichiro could do something more glorious than completing his career working here in Seattle on a team that he has worked so hard and so selflessly to support is like telling him, "give up, Dude, you just wasted the best years of your life on a futile effort." He deserves more respect than that. He knows whats he's doing and nobody in the business does it like he does.

Great posts, thanks. Perhaps M's brass will see some of your stuff and take it to heart (after our four years online M's execs have granted Crosscut access to the press box and for that we thank them).

I still don't see any articulation of a compelling downside to trading him. I'd miss his slap hits, discipline and winning grin (about the only "winning" we've seen from these guys since '01). But no one has quantified for me the value of keeping a guy who (no matter what his batting average and hit totals are) doesn't score a lot of runs and doesn't put butts on seats. He hasn't been a novelty here for a long time but he sure could be in some other big-league town.

I agree with you, Mike. He's an expensive player at ~ 1/5 of the team's salary and could still bring back multiple players. It's made a lot of sense for a lot of time. Figgins, though, hasn't impressed, but the team couldn't get much worse. They're already in position to get their third #2 draft pick in the last few years. Someday, some of these top choices have to bear fruit?!?