Harry Chiti: The Man Who Was Traded for Himself

Thanks to a hard-to-replicate series of events, Harry Chiti was part of something we will likely never see again: a player traded for themselves. About 58 years ago, Chiti was traded to the New York Mets who were in need of a back-up catcher. In return, New York agreed to send the Cleveland Indians a player to be named later. Oh, he’d be named later, alright. But it would be a couple months.

Chiti had never played in the majors with the Indians before being shipped off to the Big Apple. The back-up catcher got into just 15 games with the Mets, hitting .195 with one extra-base hit. At just 29 years old, Chiti’s best days appeared to be behind him. He had hit 41 MLB home runs to that point, but he wouldn’t hit another. By his career .659 OPS, one can tell easily that Chiti was never an offensive catcher.

Those 15 games showed the Mets all they needed to see. Chiti clearly wasn’t their answer even as a back-up catcher. But what could New York do now? They’d traded for Chiti and still owed the Indians a player back in return. Based on the low-priority nature of the trade, the Indians weren’t exactly in a hurry to recoup on their player to be named later, but they’d need compensation eventually. Well, the Mets decided to get clever.

New York decided to sell Chiti back to the Indians and wipe their hands clean of him. This move actually completed the trade of Harry Chiti for a player to be named later. Officially, the transaction went down as “Harry Chiti for Harry Chiti”.

Nowadays, a similar transaction could be done much more easily through the Rule 5 Draft. Under those rules, a team can select a player who is left off another franchise’s 40-man roster as long as that player was either 19 or older when they signed and has played four professional seasons or signed at 18 and has played five professional seasons. When a team selects a player in the Rule 5 Draft, they pay their former team $100,000. That player must remain on his new team’s MLB roster the entire season and be active for at least 90 days. If those conditions aren’t met, the player is placed on outright waivers. If nobody claims the player, they must be offered back to their original team for $50,000. Should the original team decline the sale, the player may be optioned to their new team’s minor-league system.

Certainly, you can see how Chiti would have perfectly fit into this system back in 1962 if it had existed. The Mets could have purchased his contract and upon realizing he wasn’t a good fit, sent him back to the Indians for a smaller sum. In essence, that’s exactly what they did. But since the Rule 5 Draft mechanism wasn’t in place, we got an awesome statistical anomaly where a back-up catcher who may have faded into the annals of baseball history can forever be remembered as the man who was traded for himself.

As for Chiti’s career, it was essentially over by the time he was returned to Cleveland. Despite hitting .335 in Triple-A for the Indians over the remainder of the 1962 season, he never was given a chance at the big-league level. He played 73 games in Triple-A Jacksonville in the Indians organization and 44 more with Triple-A Toronto, the Milwaukee Braves’ affiliate the following season. Chiti clubbed 31 of his 50 career minor-league home runs in 1962 and 1963, but was never afforded another chance in the big leagues. His career wrapped after playing just eight games in Toronto in 1964. After hitting .125 through 20 plate appearances, Chiti decided to hang up the cleats. But unlike the Mets and Indians did with him, it’s unlikely he would trade his professional baseball experience for anything.