Happy Monday!  We’re in the heart of the July trading season, and we want to recall one of the most famous transactions in Major League Baseball history – the sale of Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees.  It started what has been referred to as the Curse of the Bambino and it broke many hearts of Red Sox fans until 2004. While that move did not occur in July (it was completed on January 3, 1920), it was an earth-shattering baseball transaction, and we hope to see many transactions between now and July 31st. In the meantime, here’s a fun story about Ruth’s piano courtesy of Christopher J. Girard of The Boston Globe to get your week started right.

According to legend, Ruth pushed a piano onto frozen Willis Pond during a 1918 party while a member of the Boston Red Sox. For the last 10 years, Kevin Kennedy has been trying to find this piano and he may have done it – at least partially.

On June 20, a team of divers recovered a 6-sqaure-foot piece of wood that Kennedy says came from a piano. When Kennedy took it to a wood expert, the expert said it was piano veneer before Kennedy even asked. Since being raised to the surface, the one-eighth inch wood has split into about eight pieces.

Kennedy says that his diving team found, but not yet removed, a large metal object in the pond. Kennedy believes that it’s the piano’s harp.

“Could it be a block of an engine? I don’t think so, but I want to find out,’’ Kennedy said. “This story is profound for a lot of people. It inspires the imagination.’’

Kennedy hopes to remove the metal object by this summer before somebody else does. If it is the piano’s harp, Kennedy plans to restore it and hear what it sounds like.

“Every piano has a soul. Every piano sounds different,’’ he said. “We want to see what the Babe’s piano sounds like.’’