Boston teams have avoided some bad trades through the years, thank goodness

Joe DiMaggio (left) and Ted Williams (center), seen at the 1941 All-Star Game, almost traded places.

The A-Rod deal came even closer to happening in the winter of 2003, as the Red Sox searched for some way to soften the disappointment of that October. The plan: trade for the best, highest-paid, and perhaps most polarizing player in baseball. The plan was to send Manny Ramirez and a Single A lefty named Jon Lester to the Rangers for Rodriguez, then wheel Nomar Garciaparra and Scott Williamson to the White Sox for Magglio Ordonez.

That arguably would have been the most star-studded multi-team deal in modern baseball history, and it was almost certain to happen. But the Players Association intervened, nixing a plan in which Rodriguez would take a pay cut to the come to the Sox.

A-Rod instead ended up with the Yankees, who swooped in when Aaron Boone got hurt and moved him to third base so a lesser player could stay at shortstop. He had a nice vantage point when the Red Sox overcame all of their ghosts and other annoying apparitions in October 2004.

I can’t imagine Red Sox history would be anywhere near as satisfying over the last 16 years had A-Rod ended up here. Ask me, he was always a true Yankee.

And then there’s this one here, which wasn’t a trade, but rather an everything-must-go sale by a cheapskate owner, yet I suppose it belongs in this conversation.

In June 1976, A’s owner Charlie Finley sold reliever Rollie Fingers and left fielder Joe Rudi to the Red Sox for $1 million each, while also sending lefty ace Vida Blue to the Yankees for $1.5 million. Three days after the sales — without any of the players getting into a game for their new teams — commissioner Bowie Kuhn nullified the transactions, citing “the best interests of baseball.” He had a point there.

There are famous photos of Fingers and Rudi in their Sox garb, and there are fascinating what-ifs in Red Sox history had the deals been upheld. (The Red Sox probably don’t pay big bucks for star reliever Bill Campbell after the 1976 season, for starters.) But ultimately, I’ve always thought it was better that the deals were nixed, for one reason: Blue, a front-line lefty starter, was a much more appealing acquisition.

Then there are the deals that seem to be more rumor than reality, but are juicy to ponder just the same.

The Celtics have had many of those, with the assorted Paul George, Jimmy Butler, and Anthony Davis rumors in recent years. AD as a Celtic would have been swell, but I don’t know how anyone can’t be excited by the Jayson Tatum/Jaylen Brown foundation right now.

The one that really sticks out is the one reported before the 2006 draft, when rumors swirled that the Celtics might trade Theo Ratliff, Delonte West, Sebastian Telfair, and Al Jefferson to Philadelphia for Allen Iverson. He was more question than Answer at that point, and had that happened, the New Big Three never would have united.

I can’t really think of any examples of this with the Patriots, other than the deal Rob Gronkowski nixed to the Lions before the 2018 season. The Bruins? Well, that Tyler Seguin-for-Thomas Vanek rumor with the Sabres after the 2013 season is just further confirmation of how badly they wanted him out of here, isn’t it?

One last thought on baseball rumors and deals you’re glad didn’t happen. Some of my happiest memories as a kid involve talking about all the rumors in Peter Gammons’s Sunday Baseball Notes column with my dad. In my downtime when I first started at the Globe, I used to scour those old column in the archives, and would save the best trade rumors just for the heck of it on a word file.

I figure this is a fitting place to share a few of them. Here’s a half-inning’s worth:

▪ Dec. 13, 1980: “The deal is Fred Lynn for Ron Guidry and Ruppert Jones. While you are trying to swallow that, realize that George Steinbrenner is trying to swallow it too.”

▪ Aug. 19, 1984: “There were reports in Seattle this week that the Mariners plan to try to put together a package around an Ed Vande Berg-Wade Boggs deal, but unless there is no other way to find a lefthanded short man, Boggs will be here in 1985 with Steve Lyons given a year to break in as a utilityman.”

▪ Nov. 18, 1984: “What the Red Sox originally intended to do was determine if they could sign Jim Rice by Thanksgiving. If they couldn’t, they planned to trade him to the highest bidder at the winter meetings, dreaming of a package of, say, Brad Komminsk and Steve Bedrosian from Atlanta or Mookie Wilson, Randy Myers, and maybe even Jesse Orosco from the Mets. Or Dave Winfield.”

I suppose Lynn for Guidry would have worked well, if only because the Sox lost Lynn in a much worse trade about six weeks after this rumor. And Rice for Winfield would have been something to behold.

But for the most part, the adage/cliché holds true. I don’t think Rice for Komminsk/Bedrosian would be remembered especially well, you know? Good thing that one never made the leap from rumor to reality.