July 1, aka Bobby Bonilla Day, might be the most infamous day on the New York sports calendar that doesn’t involve something that happened on the field, court, or ice – but July 21 is right up there in some circles, and we hear about it every December 23?
Indeed, today is the date every year we are reminded that on this day in 1988, the Yankees dealt a young outfielder named Jay Buhner to the Seattle Mariners for aging first baseman/DH Ken Phelps…a move that years later, Frank Costanza needled “George Steinbrenner” for on an episode of Seinfeld:
As research guru Quags further goes on to point out, the Yankees were two games out of first place at the time, but just 13-11 under Lou Piniella (who replaced Billy Martin upon his fifth firing a month earlier…after Martin had replaced Piniella prior to the season) heading into meat of the second half.
Buhner, then 23, was a bit of a spare part, one who had played seven games in 1987 and then 23 that season (hitting just .188) as a mid-season call-up. Buhner played 16 of 20 games between June 1 and June 23, mostly in center field, but made just one more start and four more appearances total over the next four weeks.
With the race so close, the Yankees were looking for one more impact bat for the middle of the lineup, so Buhner, Class-A RHP Rick Balabon, and a player to be named later (eventually, Double-A RHP Troy Evers) to Seattle for Phelps.
If you’ve watched Seinfeld or know Yankees history astutely, you know how it all worked out…but if you haven’t/don’t, here’s the scoop: the Yankees went 5-1 after the trade and were in first place for a few days, but went 27-36 down the stretch to finish 3.5 games back.
Phelps, who was hitting .284 with 14 homers at the time, played 45 of the Yankees’ final 70 games and hit just .211 with 10 homers, and his presence at DH pushed Jack Clark – whose entire in the field run in 1988 to that point was a week at first base while Don Mattingly was out in early-June – into a hybrid role where he was a part-time DH, part-time outfielder and occasional fill-in at first.
The disgruntled Clark was traded to San Diego that off-season, Phelps hit .249 with seven homers as a part-time DH in 1989 before being dealt to Oakland in late-August for minor-league LHP Scott Holcomb (who never reached the Majors), and the Yankees didn’t see the postseason again until 1995.
As for Buhner? Well, neither Balabon nor Evers made it to the Majors (Evers never even made Triple-A), but Buhner hit .255 with 307 home runs over 14 seasons in Seattle, becoming an everyday player in 1991 and posting three straight 40-100 seasons from 1995-97, his lone All-Star appearance and Gold Glove both coming in 1996.
He also hit .458 against the Yankees in that epic 1995 ALDS, including the capping home run in the eighth inning of Seattle’s huge Game 4 rally against John Wetteland, and a single in Game 5 ahead of the game-tying walk issued by David Cone in the eighth.
Oh, yeah, and this:
Phelps, Buhner, and actor Jerry Stiller have been able to have some more fun with that over the years, as the trio appeared together on a SiriusXM show with our own Jody Mac and Jeff Nelson years ago, and Phelps and Buhner discussed the deal in the booth during a Mariners spring training game in 2015:
And, perhaps, in your world, the now-deceased Stiller is still needling The Boss about it in the afterlife…perhaps around the Festivus pole on Dec. 23?
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