NEW YORK, N.Y., Oct. 26 — We’ve all seen the classic “Baseball Bugs” where he takes on the Gashouse Gorillas by himself, and the announcer intones his name as playing every position for the Teetotalers. I would never suggest that this Diamondback team is quite the one-trick pony that that might imply, but using a certain historical perspective, one could view much of the starting pitching contingent that way.

I spent much of the eighties as the butt of evil baseball ownership/management jokes, as the Yankees and their fans were chided for one bad trade after another. I was reminded of this in Game 3 of the ALCS as Jay Buhner, batting for Boone, accounted for the thirteenth run of the Mariners’ 14-3 victory with a bomb to dead center. Doug Drabeck, Willie McGee, Chris Singleton, Eric Milton: I’ve taken lots of heat, and it would be easy to think from a New York perspective that we are the only team hyperactive on the trade market.

But you’d be so wrong to think that.

When the Series moves to New York for Game Three next Tuesday, try to envision what might have been. When you look out at the mound at Brian Anderson pitching from the southpaw side, imagine instead Jason Grimsley hurling from the other direction. It’s not so shocking that these two were traded for one another (Brian to Cleveland, Jason to Anaheim) for the 1996 season, as they’ve both shown promise and have had very good parts of seasons in their careers, but neither has ever put together that flat-out, knock-their-eyes-out year to catapult them into a baseball regular, much less diamond royalty. And Jason’s two years in the Big Apple should make imagining him on the mound pretty easy for Yank fans.

What might be a little more difficult is the mind tricks we would have to play (and I will be playing, I assure you) to imagine Jason on the mound in Arizona for Game One. Perhaps you’ve guessed?

HOUSTON, TEX., April, 2, 1992 — The Houston Astros Traded RHP Curt Schilling to Philadelphia today for RHP Jason Grimsley.

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!