The inevitability of a player collector

We hear it more often than not.  "Baseball is a business."  Unfortunately for us, players sticking with teams is an anomaly rather than the norm.  Even at the twilight of a career players leave the team they've been with all their career.  Look at Ichiro or Lance Berkman.

So it is another off-season and I live day to day in fear for Phil Hughes.  He has a ton of talent and I don't believe he has reached his potential.  His best years are ahead of him which makes him a huge commodity on the market.  2013 may be his last season with the Yankees if he isn't traded beforehand.  I have a sneaky suspicion he will be traded and it could be as soon as this winter.  He'll be 27 next year and will be one of the youngest starting pitchers to hit the market.  He may not command a mega-deal but I do believe he could get a significant long term deal with a team.

If he does get traded, I have no idea what to do going forward.  I could continue to collect him whichever team he lands on.  There are plenty of cards of him with the Yankees to chase so I could stick with that.  I guess my fear is he will land with a team I despise like the Red Sox.  Then what?

Not sure where this path will go.  I'd like to think I would follow Hughes wherever he went rooting for him to succeed even though I hope the team he's on goes down in flames.  But I also have to come to terms with the fact that I may not look at him the same way again.  What would it look like if he ended up back in the AL East but with Toronto or Baltimore, or worse the Red Sox.  I would think Hughes would prefer to play on the West coast which may mean the Angels, ugh.

Either way, I feel like time is running out.  I've held my breath each off-season in the hopes the Yankees will keep rolling the dice with him.  But again, "it's a business" so both sides have to want each other.  So far the ball is in the Yankee's court on what they want to do.  Come next November that may not be the case.  For now I will continue to collect my favorite Yankee and root for him every 5th day.  And hope by some miracle he continues a long career as a Yankee.