Entering the fourth of July weekend in 2008, the Dodgers were a mediocre, sub-.500 team, riddled with injuries, but still in the thick of the pennant race because nobody else in the National League West had decided to run away with the division.
General manager Ned Colletti was looking to make a splash that would catapult his team into lead contention. And apparently, he nearly completed a deal that would have brought the previous year’s Cy Young Award winner, CC Sabathia, to the Dodgers.
“I had an eight-player deal that I thought we could walk to the end, may have taken one more player from our end,” Colletti revealed on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight podcast with Buster Olney.