Trades make transient the most homebound of men. In a moment, the center of a life is pulled to the periphery, mixed up every which way, and repainted in the unfamiliar colors of a new hometown team. The traded player finds that he is suddenly quite different, adrift amongst the broken links of brotherhood that bind a team together, the loud and disappeared familiarity of a now-former neighborhood and city, and the complicated web of dependencies and histories that characterize any individual’s relationship with their workplace and home.
All gone, in an instant, and not by choice.
When Darwin Barney was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the summer of 2014, he was in his eighth year with the Chicago Cubs organization, and just starting to deserve the veteran status he’s now fully grown into. He’d entered the system by draft in the summer of 2007, a fourth-round pick out of his hometown Oregon State University, whose Beavers he’d led to back-to-back victories in the College World Series. Barney was a shortstop back then, and he remained one for the next several minor-league years, as he worked his way up from rookie ball (where he started his time with the Cubs, in 2007) to the doorstep of the majors in a 2009 season spent entirely at Triple-A Iowa.
In those days, Starlin Castro was still thought of as the shortstop of the future in Chicago, and indeed he’d make his debut for the big club at that position in early 2010. That meant that Barney—then and now a far worse hitter than his teammate—had to find a new position, and find it he did. He made his debut a few months after Castro, against the San Francisco Giants and at second base, replacing the departing Mike Fontenot, whose name is definitely a Blast From The Past. Over the next few years, spent almost exclusively at second, Barney would put up decent but unspectacular numbers for the Cubs, ending his time on the North Side with a .244/.290/.335 line in 2,000 or so plate appearances.
He also—and this is probably how he’s remembered best in Chicago—taught himself how to play spectacular defense on the right side of the infield, winning a Gold Glove in 2012, at age 26, and coming close to earning the same recognition in 2013. Especially towards the end of his Cubs career, though, he could never really hit enough to justify even his spectacular defense, and the arrival of Arismendy Alcantara (remember when he was one of the Cubs’ top prospects?) in July of 2014 spelled the end for his time in Chicago. He spent parts of two seasons in L.A. before ending up, late last year, in Toronto, for whom he’s hit a robust .320/.359/.433 over a hundred or so part-time plate appearances in 2016.
I caught up with Barney for a few moments before the Blue Jays’ game against the Red Sox at Fenway this Saturday, and asked him how he was settling in at third base, which is where the Blue Jays have mostly played him this year. Like any veteran, he played the good soldier: “I’ve played a lot there this year,” he said, “and obviously I’m able to move around the infield a lot, and have my whole career.” Thanks, Darwin. I’ll make sure to bring that up at your next contract negotiation. More interestingly, though, he didn’t seem too concerned about the different routes and arm slots third base demanded of him. “I like to think of it as an easier version of shortstop,” he said. “I was a shortstop my whole life, so moving to third is just like two less steps on the same ground ball. You’ve got to be able to throw from all arm slots to play this game, so for me the play dictates the arm slot, and it doesn’t matter where I play.”
I suppose that that’s the kind of attitude you have to have when you’re the kind of player Barney is, which is—this season at the plate aside—a light-hit, good-field infielder who can play anywhere you ask him to, and who will also be a positive clubhouse presence on young and old teams alike. It’s what’s kept him in the league without a standout offensive tool, and it’s what made the Cubs hang on to him for nearly a year after it was clear that he wasn’t going to have a long term place on the roster.
I asked Barney if he kept in touch with any of the current Cubs; after all, he was teammates with Anthony Rizzo for more than two years, and there are still quite a few other guys on the current roster who knew him when he donned blue pinstripes. He hasn’t forgotten them. “Yeah, I talk to some of those guys every now and then,” he said. “Those are some of my true friends in baseball, and I’m happy for them.” What more can you say, really, when a team that moved on without you is playing its best baseball in nearly a century? Barney sees the talent on the North Side, even if he isn’t conceding anything to them just yet. “They’ve got a good club over there,” he said. “I can only hope that we can run into them in the World Series, and then we’ll see what happens.”
I didn’t have time to ask Barney much else—he was heading out to hit BP, in advance of an 0-for-4 game—but I was glad I had a moment to catch up. Scattered throughout the league are other players like Barney who, in Chicago, were the excess lumber of a four-year rebuild, discarded soon after they became unnecessary, and no longer wanted on a team with designs on the baseball stratosphere. They are still, yet, very much human in all of humanity’s ups and downs, and still very much striving to do whatever it is they set out to do in this game. Barney is one of those players, and if the Cubs end their century-long journey this year, it’ll be worth remembering that he is, by that standard, one of those who deserves to be thanked. In most cases, they did not choose to end their time with the organization, nor did they have a say in where their lives went next. They just got a phone call one day, out of the blue Chicago sky …
Lead photo courtesy Bob DeChiara—USA Today Sports.