ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - "I'll never forget this," former St. Louis Cardinals general manager Walk Jocketty told KMOX's Mike Shannon and Mike Claiborne.
And fans of both the Cards and Atlanta Braves will never forget it either. It's the 2003 trade that helped bring the 2004 World Series Championship to St. Louis and is among the top-five biggest Cardinals trades of all time.
On Friday's episode of Live with Mike, Jocketty told the story of how the Cardinals swapped JD Drew and Eli Marrero, for Ray King, Jason Marquis and Wainwright with the Braves.
The deal was made between Jocketty and then Braves GM John Schuerholz. Jocketty explained that Schuerholz had been talking for weeks about how much he wanted Drew, which wasn't like him, Jocketty said. They finally got together at the 2003 Winter Meetings, with both of their respective front office groups, sat in a hotel room and hashed out a deal centered around Drew for Wainwright.
Immediately after the deal, Jocketty was convinced he'd gotten the better of Schuerholz and the Braves: "They walk out of the room ... I looked over to the group and said, 'We got em.'"
There's a pretty good argument that's still true today.
Drew and Marrero each played just one year in Atlanta. Although Drew was clearly the best player on that 2004 Braves team, they only reached the first round of the postseason.
The Cardinals, however, won the World Series two years later with Wainwright closing out the Series with a strikeout.
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