The Trade That Changed Baseball: Eckersley to Oakland, April 3, 1987
On April 3, 1987, the Chicago Cubs did what teams do with aging, struggling pitchers — they cut their losses. They packaged up 32-year-old Dennis Eckersley, fresh off a dismal 6-11 season with a 4.57 ERA and some very public off-field demons, and shipped him to the Oakland Athletics for three minor leaguers whose names you’ve never heard. Nobody blamed the Cubs. Eckersley looked finished. He was battling alcoholism. His fastball wasn’t what it used to be. He was, by all reasonable accounts, a cautionary tale in cleats.
What happened next was one of the most improbable career reinventions in the history of American professional sports — and it started right here, on this date, with a trade that the Cubs surely convinced themselves was a reasonable transaction.
A Career That Looked Like It Was Over
To understand how remarkable the Eckersley story is, you have to understand the depth of where he’d been. Dennis Lee Eckersley grew up in Fremont, California — right there in the Bay Area — rooting for the same Oakland Athletics he’d eventually rescue. He was a legitimate star as a young pitcher. The Cleveland Indians drafted him in the third round of the 1972 amateur draft, and by 1975 he was in the majors, winning The Sporting News Rookie Pitcher of the Year award. He looked like a future ace from day one.
