It is difficult to pinpoint the moment when transactions became more important than games, but it is indisputably true that fans love the movement of players and money from locale to locale for the same reason we love gambling—because it is busy, and because it is another chance to display our ignorance. Until baseball's trade deadline brings July's annual Month of Bargains to a close later today, we can all imagine what our favorite team is going to do in lieu of delivering any actual work product; this will keep us both frothily engaged and emotionally and fiscally tied to the teams that otherwise drag us down. We love when our team is buying and hate when they are selling, because one implies belief and the other despair. Buying rocks, selling sucks.

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