It. Happens. Every. Time.

Longtime readers of this site will know that I have something of a reputation for being away from home at the most inopportune moments. When the Dodgers got Manny Ramirez? I was on tour with a band in Cincinnati. When they traded Carlos Santana for Casey Blake a few days before that, it was Wisconsin.  When they got no-hit by the Angels and WON? I was in Baltimore. Even just a few weeks ago, when they were busy getting Shane Victorino & Brandon League on July 31, I was in Chicago on business. It never fails – when something awesome happens, I tend to be away from home and not immediately need a computer.

So you can imagine how badly I’ve been bouncing off the walls for hours on a 4.5 hour bus ride (to Boston, coincidentally) watching the Twitterz explode with news of the massive, massive trade that is apparently going to send Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, & Nick Punto to the Dodgers for Rubby de la Rosa, Jerry Sands, Allen Webster, Ivan DeJesus Jr, and James Loney, though it’s not fully official and that package may not be legit.

This isn’t a trade. It’s a franchise-defining statement that we could spend years fully parsing through. Unfortunately, I don’t have years. I only have about ten minutes before the wonderfully understanding future wife rescinds her laptop and insists we go out to dinner, so some bullet point thoughts are going to have to suffice:

1. HOLY CRAP.
2. These new owners? NOT MESSING AROUND.
3. You can argue in what order, but this team could suddenly have a middle of the lineup of Matt Kemp, Adrian Gonzalez, Hanley Ramirez, & Andre Ethier, with A.J. Ellis, Luis Cruz, Mark Ellis, & Shane Victorino providing support. I mean, good lord.
4. The end of James Loney! I don’t want that to get lost here. He’s gone!
5. We’ve long known that DeJesus had no future here, and obviously losing Loney is addition by subtraction.
6. Don’t even think about Carl Crawford right now. He’s injured and won’t play for the Dodgers in 2012. We’ll need to dig into what made him such a bust in Boston at another time, but for the moment I’m trying to keep in mind just how talented he was in Tampa.
7. Much as I will miss seeing Sands develop, if you’ve just added Gonzalez and Crawford for years to come, to an outfield that already has Kemp & Ethier and Yasiel Puig (among others) on the way, it’s hard to argue there’s room for him – if Don Mattingly was ever even going to play him, if he won’t.
8. Josh Beckett’s velocity drop concerns me. But we’ve seen guys go from AL->NL and succeed before, and was anyone dying to see more Joe Blanton?
9. Speaking of which, thanks for coming, Joe Blanton.
10. HOLY CRAP.
11. I will miss Rubby de la Rosa and Allen Webster. A lot. In fact, I wrote about how great RDLR was at Fangraphs just this morning, and that’s a loss which is going to hurt – I expect them both to succeed. But as we’ve seen before, starting pitching is a position of depth, and you still have Zach Lee and a rotation which now is wildly overstuffed, so…
12. How in the hell did Rubby get past the entire NL to get claimed by Toronto? Shape up, Houston.
13. Oh cool, Alex Castellanos is back.
14. Nick Punto? Um, great. Does this mean Uribe is gone yet?
15. Look, Loney & IDJ2 are useless, so you’ve traded three good prospects for one excellent first baseman and two huge risk/good reward veterans. I’m not sure how I feel about that, and I know that many of you will hate it. I get it.
16. At the end of the day, the 2012 club is absolutely improved, and that’s going to make the rest of the season phenomenal to watch.
17. Why did I schedule a wedding and honeymoon over the last two weeks of September? At this rate, when I return, they’ll have traded for Miguel Cabrera and moved the team to Times Square.
18. KEMP/GONZALEZ/ETHIER/RAMIREZ. I mean.. good god.
19. Dinner beckons.

For what is undoubtedly one of the most important days in franchise history, I feel like I’m being woefully minimalistic  in digging into it; unfortunately, this came out of nowhere, and real life can’t be put off. Much, much, MUCH more to come.

Oh, and Nathan Eovaldi is back, but is this anything like the team he left? I think not.