At least Harry Chiti can thank his lucky stars that when his ball club traded him in 1962, it was for neither fish nor fowl but for himself. He was playing for the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians). Perhaps playing is a stretch — the club traded him to the New York Mets for a player to be named later before he'd even played a single game with the Indians. Chiti had bounced around the majors for more than a decade with stints as a catcher with the Chicago Cubs, Kansas City Athletics, Detroit Tigers, and the Baltimore Orioles.
With the Mets, he had a lackluster .195 batting average with no runs batted in over 15 games. The Mets sent him back to Cleveland for the player to be named later, which was him. Since this was an MLB first, Chiti couldn't seem to outrun this infamous trade. "I sure do keep hearing about it," Chiti, who later became a sheriff's deputy in Tennessee after finishing his career in the minors, told the Fort Lauderdale News in 1986. Chiti was the first but not the last MLB player to suffer this strange fate. In 1980, the New York Yankees traded catcher Brad Gulden to the Seattle Mariners for $100,000, Larry Milbourne, and a player to be named later. But after less than two dozen games, the Mariners shipped Gulden back to the Yankees the next year, completing the trade with Gulden as the player to be named.
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