Why I love baseball's Hot Stove Season

It's something to talk about, nay, obsess about, while there's no baseball being played

Talking trades since the 19th century.
(Image credit: AS400 DB/Corbis)

For baseball obsessives, it rarely gets better than Hot Stove Season, the late autumn interlude when a frenzy of trades, signings, and surprise retirements remake Major League Baseball teams. Potential Hall of Famers can be traded, sometimes for each other. World Series-winning teams can be completely blown up in "fire sales." Hell, even managers can be traded.

True seamheads rank the Hot Stove right up there with a one-game playoff or the first week of "real baseball" in April, (when the regular season finally ends spring training) as the greatest platforms for speculation, second-guessing, and statistical analysis. The MLB Network devotes several hours of programming a day to a show called Hot Stove, and the ascendance of fantasy baseball and sabermetrics have only added to the fascination. Shocking, heartbreaking, and legacy-defining twists can and do happen in the Hot Stove.

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Anthony L. Fisher

Anthony L. Fisher is a journalist and filmmaker in New York with work also appearing at Vox, The Daily Beast, Reason, New York Daily News, Huffington Post, Newsweek, CNN, Fox News Channel, Sundance Channel, and Comedy Central. He also wrote and directed the feature film Sidewalk Traffic, available on major VOD platforms.