"Toots," a documentary about legendary Big Apple barman Toots Shor that will open in Boston next month, contains a fascinating piece of Red Sox-Yankees trivia that could have altered baseball history. Seems then-Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey and former Yankees owner Dan Topping got hammered in Toots' joint one night and decided to swap Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. They even shook on it. The next morning, Yawkey realized his mistake and called Topping, who now had second thoughts himself, and the whole thing was off.

http://msn.foxsports.com/rumors/mlb#5

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Wow....mind-boggling to wonder how things might have been different if this trade had gone through. I can't wait to see this documentary!

My understanding was that Yawkey woke up the next morning, didn't call it off, but asked for a guy just reaching the Yankees from the minors to be tossed in...some kid named Berra.

Understandably, that was enough to kill the deal.

It's surprising that Williams kept playing so much longer than DiMaggio. Despite DiMaggio's obviously better defense, Williams-for-DiMaggio in the late 1940's would have been one of the great trades in Yankees history.

No doubt in my mind that the Yankees should have done this deal.

I had heard this trade talked about before, but I always thought it was a joke or purely hypothetical.

Imagine what Williams could have done with that short RF porch in Yankee Stadium. Would 600 HR be out of the question?

Hell, while we're discussing the hypotheticals, put Williams in Yankee Stadium, don't send him off to WWII and Korea, and I'd say he passes 714 without a doubt.

If Williams didn't fight in the service for those years he would have hit 600 anyway in Boston