MLB Player Wishes Team Would "Just Trade Me and Get it Over With Already"

Cleveland, OH (July 28) - Cleveland Indians infielder Jhonny Peralta so believes that he is the next to be traded by the team that he has taken to wandering around the clubhouse before every game, pacing and muttering that he wishes the team would "just do it already."

"Jhonny truly believes he is next," affirmed teammate Grady Sizemore. "He thought he was next before they traded Casey (Blake), but now he's convinced."

The Indians traded Blake to the Dodgers over the weekend.

Teammates have tried to allay his fears, but Peralta cannot be soothed. Even manager Eric Wedge tried to calm him, but to no avail.

"I told him that we have absolutely no thoughts of trading him," Wedge told reporters during batting practice yesterday, as Peralta criss-crossed the field, asking teammates, and reporters, if they've heard anything new. "But he won't have any of it. He just tells me, 'You're just saying that.'"

Peralta has taken to sneaking a peek at General Manager Mark Shapiro's blackberry whenever he can, and has been caught trying to open company e-mail on employees' laptops, all with the belief that every e-mail, every text message, contains details of a trade involving him.

"God just do it!," Sizemore said Peralta screamed in the showers after Saturday night's game. Sizemore added that Peralta then yelled, "I can't TAKE it anymore!"

The non-waiver trading deadline is Thursday afternoon.

Teammates and club officials aren't certain just how Peralta got it into his head that he is on the trading block.

"I didn't say anything -- I don't THINK," said traveling secretary Mike Hodges. "God...I...maybe it was when I made that joke a week or so ago about cleaning house here. I'm so sorry that Jhonny took it this far. It was just a joke!"

Others tried to offer theories, ranging from "he's just paranoid" to "that damned Internet" to "he must have gotten it from Satch", referring to longtime equipment manager Satch Sanders, 77.

"Everyone knows that Satch is like the Associated Press around here," said a club employee who requested anonymity. "Maybe the old coot said something and Jhonny took it the wrong way."

Regardless, Peralta has taken to not speaking to the media anymore, until, he says, "the trade freaking happens."

"Then I'll have plenty to say," he said on Saturday.

An Internet poll on the team's website says that if Peralta is on the trading block, it's "because he spells his first name like an idiot."