Imrem: Baseball teams looking for that special piece

Let's ponder Monday's 3 p.m. trade deadline, which signals the end of a baseball's bizarre bazaar in which most teams designated themselves as either buyers or sellers.

Bizarre? Try to envision, say, newspapers frantically exchanging employees as the clock ticked down.

(Please stifle the wisecracks about me.)

The Washington Post might have traded Carl Bernstein to The New York Times, Bob Woodward might not have been able to crack Watergate on his own, and Richard Nixon might have gone up on Mount Rushmore instead of down in flames.

Country-music artists don't often sing about baseball, preferring songs about trains and mamas and barrooms and booze and lost love.

We'll simply have to imagine Jake Owen's hit, "What We Ain't Got," being about baseball's trade deadline: "We ain't happy where we are … There's greener grass in the neighbor's yard … A bigger house and a faster car … We ain't happy where we are."

In other words, buyers want bigger houses to help them win during the next few months and sellers want faster cars to help them win during the next few years.

The Cubs have been in the former category and the White Sox in … well, who knows what they're thinking?

Chicago's teams ideally would concoct one of those fabled deals that helps both of them, but don't expect Chris Sale and Kyle Schwarber to be trading jerseys at Madison Street anytime Monday.

Overall, the period leading up to the deadline should be like a combination of "Match Game," "The Price is Right" and ultimately "Let's Make a Deal."

Or maybe it's more like election day in politics, the end of every month in automobile sales and a few weeks of television sweeps all wrapped up in one.

Vote for this veteran player! … Let me put you in this fully loaded rookie! … The countdown to the deadline is must-see TV!

OK, enough of that.

Every team in every sport has built-in opportunities to increase its short-term or long-term prospects.

There are trade deadlines, college drafts, free-agency periods … each designed for teams to get "what they ain't got."

Recently the Cubs made significant trades for significant players. They wanted what they didn't have - left-handed relief pitching - and acquired Aroldis Chapman and Mike Montgomery.

Early returns have been mixed, but the Cubs have time to squeeze more positive results out of their refreshed bullpen.

At least give the Cubs credit for identifying "what they ain't got" sooner than later, and they still have a few hours to trade for a left-handed hitter to balance their batting order.

The best the White Sox have done is say they're open to anything: buying, selling, both or neither.

That sounds like the worst, too, like the Sox are confused as to whether to bunt or swing away.

The Sox did consummate a broken-bat single of a transaction Sunday - lefty reliever Zach Duke to St. Louis for minor-league outfielder Charlie Tilson.

Maybe by Monday afternoon the Sox will figure out who they are and where they want to go.

Jake Owen summed it up one more time for the Sox, Cubs and 28 other teams:

"We all want what we ain't got … Our favorite doors are always locked … On a higher hill with a taller top … We all want what we ain't got."

mimrem@dailyherald.com