Armour: The 1971 Winter Meetings in Phoenix

From SABR member Mark Armour at The National Pastime Museum on December 29, 2017:

Although the main purpose of baseball’s Winter Meetings, for more than a century, has been to allow baseball management to meet on important issues of the game—franchise problems, television deals, labor issues, rules proposals—most of the media coverage, and most of the fans’ attention, is focused on trades (or, in recent years, free-agent signings). Teams have always been able to trade throughout the offseason, but something about being in the same hotel has led to both increased fan expectation, and more actual trading.

If an active trade fest is the kind of Winter Meetings you crave, then the Winter Meetings of 1971 were for you. There has never been anything like it. When the dust settled, 53 players had changed teams in 15 trades, including some of the best players in the game. Most significantly, several of the deals acted to dramatically reshape teams that would dominate the rest of the decade.

The 1971 baseball Winter Meetings took place in Phoenix, Arizona, from Saturday, November 27, through Friday, December 3.

Read the full article here: https://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/1971-winter-meetings



Originally published: December 29, 2017. Last Updated: December 29, 2017.