Yankees History: New York finally finishes absurdly giant trade for perfect game ace

Next week, the Winter Meetings hysteria should firmly absorb Yankees fans' collective brain tissue. Now, imagine if you didn't have 24/7 access to every insider's thought, whim and burp. Imagine if you were trying to follow the transaction wire with a total lack of transparency. What would it be like to try to track a trade entirely via daily updates in the morning paper. And what if a trade you first heard about in early November wasn't done until December 1st?!

Yankee fans of a certain age experienced this agonizing reality back in 1954, when it took three weeks to finish off a 17-player trade with the Baltimore Orioles. Imagine Brian Cashman and Mike Elias getting in a room, batting about a few trade possibilities, then stacking players onto the pyramid for three full weeks before shaking hands and dotting the i's. Riiiiiiight up until the point of total instability.

When the dust finally settled (or was that fresh December powder?), the Yankees had obtained seven players, while Baltimore took home 10 in a Cyber Monday deal for the ages.

It wasn't just a bunch of eventual non-notables changing hands, either. The Yankees, coming off five consecutive titles and a '54 backslide behind Cleveland (and clearly paying an early version of the Yankees Tax here), sent 31-year-old Gene Woodling, an outfield starter on the '53 team with a league-leading .429 OBP, to the O's (FIRE CASHMAN!). He proceeded to subtract 0.2 bWAR from the Orioles and wound up with Cleveland midseason, where he learned to thrive again. Why would anyone ever help the '50s Yankees?!

They also shipped eventual three-time All-Star Gus Triandos to Baltimore, as well as Hal Smith, who would go on to crush the Yankees with Pittsburgh in the 1961 World Series.

This Date in Yankees History: New York completes three-week, 17-player trade with Orioles for Don Larsen (and, uh, many others)

Coming to the Yankees? 1956 Perfect Game author Don Larsen, as well as Bob Turley, who was a two-time All-Star and the 1958 Cy Young award winner.

Did the other 12 players really need to be included? Couldn't this have just been a relatively successful three-for-two swap? Sure! Seems like it. But we weren't there. Everything in the '50s was just one or two degrees more rickety than it needed to be.

Regardless, both teams emerged satisfied — and even though Woodling was a downer at first, he eventually returned to Baltimore for three productive years and made the 1959 All-Star team. Larsen might not have been quite the regular season behemoth that Turley was, but despite an uneven record (though 11-5, 3.26 was pretty great in 1956), his perfecto in that season's Fall Classic will live eternally.

Personally? I'd trade 18+ players for that memory. Make it an even 20.