THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

24 hours ago from right now (full disclosure, I'm a night owl and don't sleep much) I was tracking down trade rumors about Adam Dunn. Several national reports and a number of my local sources were telling me that Dunn had a good chance of getting traded before Thursday's 4pm trading deadline.

My sources told me Dunn would be a 'fall back' option for the Tampa Bay Rays if the three way deal they were involved in with the Red Sox and Marlins fell through. Tampa was due to get Pirates outfielder, Jason Bay, in that scenario.

Well what do you know, that deal fell through. But by the time Manny Ramirez went to the Dodgers, the Pittsburgh Pirates wound up with prospects (suspects?) and Bay wound up in Boston, Dunn was off the market. Walt Jocketty wasn't satisfied with what Tampa was dangling in exchange for Dunn. And besides, down deep, I'm told, Reds owner Bob Castellini wants to exhaust all avenues between now and November in an attempt to sign Dunn to a long term deal. Many in the Reds front office don't want that, but have given their driven owner a concession: they'll wait to see how well Dunn reacts to Griffey, Junior's departure and whether or not Dunn can continue the torrid hitting streak he's been on.

My best guess, Dunn stays. I say this for two reasons. One, the departure of Junior (and Sean Casey, Aaron Boone, Austin Kearns and others) now has transformed Dunn into an elder statesman in the clubhouse. Crazy as that sounds for a not yet 29 year old, that's exactly what Adam Dunn is right now. For a team desperate for clubhouse leadership ever since the departure of Greg Vaughn nine years ago, Dunn has a chance to show he's got something in his game besides mammoth home runs and strike outs. Two, Dunn is a guy who gets comfortable in a hurry. He doesn't like change. Remember his little rant this spring about how bad it would be for the Reds to leave their Sarasota spring training headquarters. Dunn went on and on about how easy it was to navigate through that town, how he knew where everything was and didn't have to learn new streets, restaurants and things like that. It was a little window into the psyche of a guy who like predictability. Staying with the Reds is predictable. Mind you, the Reds will have to be competitive with the open market. But if the dollars come down to a three year deal worth $50 million in Cincinnati versus a four year deal worth $60 million, my guess is Dunn stays here.

But, his future status with the Cincinnati Reds is clearly on him now.

As for the Junior trade, I'd be lying if I said I saw it coming. To me, with his age and medical history, he seemed untradeable. But the White Sox are 'renting' him for about $4 million for the final two months of this season, cheap for that team if it leads to a pennant. They won't pick up Junior's 2009 $16.5 million option and they gave the Reds little in returnn (while making the Reds pay $4 million of their own money just to get ride of him) but it's a low risk move for that team. I'd be shocked if he becomes the everyday centerfielder. Griffey doesn't have that kind of range anymore. But I do think he'll contribute.

Reaction from around the country now, starting with espn.com. There's also some video linked with this story.

Meantime, cbssports.com columnist, Denny Knobler broke the story on what exactly the Reds were getting the the Junior trade (two mid 20's players, one of whom would have to buy a ticket to get into a MLB game), and now has this story on the trade deadline winners and losers.

And this is a terrific story from si.com's Steve Aschburner, who lays out a time line of just how a MLB trade is put together, leading up to the July 31 deadline. Good journalism.

In a way, Thursday defied the recent baseball paradigm: most big, blockbuster deals don't get done until the winter time. But the three way deal between Pittsburgh, Boston and the Dodgers brought some life back to the mid summer swap meet. And of course locally, so did the Griffey, Junior deal.

For the record, I will miss him. Like most of the members of the local Cincinnati media, he gave me a hard time, played me to use the vernacular. But it never lasted more than 10-15 seconds. Though a lot of fans in my town have a tough time understanding this, Junior is a good guy, who does a lot of terrific off the field work away from the cameras. He's a human being who makes mistakes, like the recent 'throat slash' gesture at broadcaster Jeff Brantley. But when you look at his whole body of work, Junior has done just fine. It just didn't work out here, too many injuries and not enough good players on Reds teams while he was in Cincinnati.

I wish him luck.

Finally, you have to see this. At the "X" Games, boarder Danny Way gave us a great, if inadvertent highlight.

Apparently, he was OK. Way came back for another three rounds and finished second in his event.