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Punxtawney and Tampa Bay concluded negotiations today in a trade that sent Pete Schourek and Socks Byrne to Tampa Bay and sent Tony Batista and Marty Cordova to Punxtawney. This is another major deal by the Groundhogs, a deal that surprised pretty much everyone.
Following is an excerpt from a brief press conference that followed the annoucement:
Reporter: Mr. Shapiro, why would you make a trade like this? What good does Tony Batista do you, you already have Alomar? And Pete Schourek had dominated in his first few starts. Does it have to do with his injury?
Shapiro: Well, obviously there is more in store. We wouldn't have gone after Tony so hard unless we had plans for another deal. And no, the fact that we traded Pete has nothing to do with his injury. It was a minor injury and we had planned to possibly skip one start for him.
Reporter: Another deal? Can you give us any information on that?
Shapiro: Not at this time. I can only tell you that, as you may have guessed, there is a great deal of interest in Roberto Alomar and we feel that it may be in our best interests to part with him at this point rather than keep him around.
With that, Shapiro concluded the conference but hinted that the reporters might just want to hang around for a while since another one might be forthcoming. Many of the media members speculate that Shapiro may have been negotiating a possible trade involving Alomar even before this trade was concluded.
Written by Dan Shapiro