Sad Hollywood ending for Juan Uribe as Dodgers-Braves trade nears finalization

LOS ANGELES – Standing late Tuesday night at an elevator door down the hall from his friends and teammates, his last hours with the Los Angeles Dodger likely just ahead of him, Juan Uribe said that, yes, he'd miss this. They like to call it a business, this game, because it tears away the silly emotions that make leaving a pleasant place so unpleasant.

He was pretty sure he'd been traded to the Atlanta Braves, after four seasons and a couple months as a Dodger. He'd been told to expect final word Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, he said.

"I'm good," he said, trying. "It's OK."

He twirled a cigar in his fingers. What would he miss here?

Uribe cocked his head and tried to smile. He looked at the elevator door. It hadn't yet opened. His eyes went wet, and he had to stop it there, so he exhaled.

"Whew," he said, and gestured to the door that kept him, as though the elevator had arrived and he really had to go. He waved, turned away and brushed the back of his hand across his eyes.

The Dodgers and Braves arrived at a trade agreement, once disrupted in the previous 12 hours but now, according to a source, awaiting league approval. The affable Uribe, a favorite in the clubhouse, and right-hander Chris Withrow would go to the Braves in what was believed to be a six-player deal, and the Dodgers would receive infielder Alberto Callaspo, along with pitchers Eric Stults, Ian Thomas and Juan Jaime.

Uribe was losing playing time at third base anyway, and a sturdier Dodgers clubhouse perhaps is as equipped to lose Uribe today than at any time in his tenure here. Still, it was an awkward day. Uribe stood with his teammates for the national anthem, then retired to the clubhouse for the duration of the game. Yasiel Puig, recovering slowly from a hamstring injury and an admirer of Uribe's, was in the clubhouse, as well.

"Say good-bye to Uribe?" Puig said after Uribe had left. "Why?"

He knew why. There'd been talk all day.

That thing Uribe does when he's reasonably sure he's hit a home run, half jazz hands half scared kitty, he did that Tuesday afternoon when he turned from a locker the Dodgers had tried to give away earlier in the day to discover an assortment of stooped reporters.

His eyes widened. In a reedy voice, Godfather-like, he blurted, "Wha? What are you doing? I didn't do anything!"

He smiled. Over his shoulder, on his locker's top shelf, sat a black cap with a rhinestone-Bedazzled message on its crown, "Callejeros VIP." Street VIP, if you will. And he will. On the bottom shelf, a brick-sized bottle once filled with cologne, now holding maybe a finger's width. So you know he'd had it at least a week.

Uribe is 36 years old. Some days he looks it. The rest, maybe not so much. He runs like he's carrying a basket of laundry and walks like he's carrying two, honest-to-God proof the game is built for all sizes and shapes and MPHs. There are better ballplayers than Uribe, some of them along this very wall of lockers, which is why there was some question he'd still be in this one. There are worse, too, which is about the way the world works.

Few of those players, perhaps, are better equipped to live with a day such as Tuesday, when Uribe awoke to learn he'd probably been traded to the Atlanta Braves after five seasons as a Dodger, discovered around lunch he probably hadn't been, went to the ballpark and kicked that around a little, then found out around dinner that, yeah, he'd probably been traded to the Braves again, this time for good.

The Braves seem to be very transparent about these things. Callaspo, the veteran infielder who'd been part of the trade until he rejected it, was in Tuesday night's lineup, just as he was in Monday night's before he was scratched.

"Attention media," went the press box announcement Tuesday, "the Braves have a lineup change. Alberto Callaspo has once again been scratched…"

Shortly thereafter, the Braves reported from their Twitter account, "Callaspo has been scratched due to trade talks being revisited."

Well then.

By mid-evening, Callaspo had changed his mind – "I just signed my contract here, so I just want to finish my season here," he'd told reporters an hour or two before he decided to finish his season elsewhere. If it seemed odd Callaspo, a .132 hitter over the past month, would prefer to stay with an organization that wished to trade him, it likely seemed odder (to Callaspo, anyway) to consent to an organization that has third basemen bubbling up from the ground. Even with Uribe (and his cap and cologne) gone, the Dodgers have Justin Turner and Alex Guerrero on the roster and – take your pick – Corey Seager and Hector Olivera on the way.

The Dodgers are in this perpetual transaction motion, mostly accumulating passable arms and flexible parts. The little bit of Callaspo that might help in the short term is a left-handed bat (he's a switch-hitter) off the bench. The rest was about more accumulation.

When it was all settled and Callaspo had ceased the coin-flipping, the Dodgers had received Callaspo and more pitching. The Braves had Uribe and a well-regarded arm – Withrow's – that currently is recovering from Tommy John surgery.

Uribe had made limbo look like a pretty cool place for as long as he could bear it.

"One never knows," he'd said in the afternoon. "Whatever their decision is, I respect it.

"It's happened to me before. One day you're here and the next day you're not. … It's just a matter of respecting their decision. Thank God there are other teams that want me."

A business, they'd said. That's all. Nothing personal.

And so Juan Uribe turned away before it got too personal.

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