...the perfect non-sports trade...

There are really interesting trades that happen in sports every year – some teams win, some teams lose…sometimes, every once in a while, both teams can look back and think, "you know what, that trade actually worked for both of us."

I think about the Chargers/Giants trade of Eli for Rivers.  It's hard to say who got the better end of that deal, b/c the Giants "won" a super bowl and the Chargers have been very good under Rivers for a very long time. I think both teams, however, would agree that they wouldn't want the other  player as their QB.

I think back to a trade that happened in my life, not related to sports, that fits into the, "It just had to be that way" category…neither of us regret the deal, and both of us recognize what we sacrificed in the short term, but how we were richer for it.

At some point in 1993, I was over Trav's house and we were listening to a new CD he had – which was The Beatles Past Masters, I believe it was Volume 2, but maybe Volume 1.  This is not so much a Greatest Hits as it was a filler CD – a CD created for American audiences to cover the gaps that had been left by the original CD releases of the other albums. Some songs appeared on regular EP's in the 60's in America, but not on the CD version of those releases in the 80's and 90's.

The songs were all great, all phenomenal, and for me, starting my Beatles collection, I needed these songs.  Trav liked the Beatles, and he enjoyed listening, but I realized this CD wasn't going to change his life like it would eventually change mine.

But what did I have to offer?  Looking back, you can say that he got the better end of the deal - and I can assure you that I see the value in Pearl Jam's debut album, "Ten", as much as anyone, but at the time, the price was right.

A 1 for 1 swap that ended up being as influential to him (I know he listened to "Black" probably 800 times a year) as it was for me (I likely listened to my Past Masters CD the same amount).  The swap was an even 1 for 1 CD swap, unheard of in the current times of "Can I burn that?"  But this was before burning – when copying a cd to tape was a messy fiasco that required an additional purchase, a working cd to tape recorder, and the kind of wherewithal that a 10^th grader doesn't possess.

I don't regret the trade for a minute, at some point in the mid 90's I repurchased Pearl Jam's 'Ten', and Trav also had equal opportunity to purchase the Past Masters collection for himself…but it wasn't about the long term success or failure of the trade, it was about the immediate impact that music had on both of us, and how we did what needed to be done. The perfect trade.