This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Oct. 1 Gaming Issue. Subscribe today!
There is no easy way to tell a player he's been traded. But generally whatever awkwardness or emotion an executive feels from those calls is offset by the excitement of the calls welcoming the players joining the club. Last December Andrew Friedman took pleasure from neither: He had to call the team's prodigal son, Matt Kemp, to tell him he'd been reacquired by the Dodgers -- the team he came up with and with which he nearly won an MVP -- but likely wasn't staying long.