Red Reporter has done a great job of ruining my weekend by linking to this New York Times article from 1995. Don’t go read it on an empty stomach.
Remember when Jim Bowden was GM of our beloved Reds and he traded David Wells to the Orioles for speedy center fielder Curtis Goodwin? Goodwin, of course, was the original Corey Patterson/Willy Taveras, and he was a complete flop. (And we all knew he was going to be a flop at the time; I need to go look at the Reds Listserv archives to see what the immediate reaction was to that trade.)
So, yeah, bad trade…but it gets worse. Evidently, Bowden coveted Goodwin, so he turned down an offer from the New York Yankees. The Yankees were offering a couple of their young prospects:
Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada.
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. Jim “Leatherpants” Bowden continues to haunt us.