Baseball OKs trades between NL-AL, December 4, 1958

You really don't have to wonder what "She Gods of Shark Reef" is about, do you?

Here's another one of those surprises found in the old files. Baseball approved interleague trading for a short period each winter beginning the following November. Players would not have to clear waivers to be dealt, so the Yankees could send Whitey Ford to the Dodgers for Sandy Koufax without any complications. That's just an example, not some old baseball rumor. The concept was not unanimously approved by team owners. The Yankees were the only American League team to vote against the plan, but the National League barely passed it, 5-3. Fresco Thompson of the Dodgers thought the plan would "open the gates" to trade stars from one league to the other. "Say a team owns a Willie Mays and nothing else," Thompson said. "It needs money. Under the new rule, the team can sell or trade a big star like Mays to the other league. The other league gets all the benefits and our league has been stripped of one of its biggest drawing cards." Sounds a little like the Florida Marlins. Funny that Thompson used the Giants' star as an example--that must have been the first player he could name, right?  Frank Finch's lead in The Times provided the other side of that coin: "How would you like to see a Roy Sievers, a Jackie Jensen or a Nellie Fox in a Dodger uniform?" --Keith Thursby