In spring training 1978, the Red Sox traded an up-and-coming third baseman named Ted Cox to the Cleveland Indians. The previous season Cox had been a September call-up who captured Red Sox fans’ hearts by hitting safely in his first six at-bats, a major league record for a rookie to start his career.

A first round draft pick in 1973, Cox played 13 games and finished with a .362 batting average. The Red Sox went 10-3 in those games, giving the 22-year-old Oklahoman the look of a winner. Six months later he was the lynchpin in the deal that sent him to Cleveland.

I was in Winter Haven the day of the trade, sitting in the press office with other reporters. “It’s a helluva gamble, Peter,” Red Sox GM Haywood Sullivan admitted to Red Sox beat writer Peter Gammons.

A few moments later in walked that helluva gamble, his long brown hair askew and looking like he’d just woken up.

He won 20 games in 1978 and carried the Red Sox to a first place tie with the New York Yankees. That player was Dennis Eckersley, and he won 88 games in seven seasons with Boston.

On Tuesday, the winter hot stove season got a lot hotter when the Red Sox took another gamble by trading another third baseman, this time Yoan Moncada, and three other prized prospects to the Chicago White Sox for lefthander Chris Sale.

“The ability to get a Chris Sale doesn’t come often,” understated Boston’s President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski, who like Haywood Sullivan felt it was better to have a bird in the hand than four in the bushes.

Moncada is a 6-foot-2, 205-pound power hitting Cuban who Baseball America calls the best minor league prospect in baseball. The White Sox also acquired pitcher Michael Kopech (who in July threw a fastball clocked at 105 miles per hour during a minor league game in Salem, Va.), outfielder Luis Alexander Basabe and right-hander Victor Diaz.

“It was Sale or nothing,” said Dombrowski. “We didn’t have any other conversations because no one else was close to the ability (of Chris Sale) to make us better.”

Sale is a 6-foot-6, 180-pound hurler from Lakeland, Fla., who was taken with the 13th overall pick of the 2010 MLB draft. He was pitching in the big leagues after just 14 innings of minor league ball.

Today he’s a five-time All Star with a career 70-47 record and is perhaps the best lefthander in baseball behind the LA Dodgers’ ace Clayton Kershaw.

He’s a left-handed version of Roger Clemens. Big and bulky, he’s unafraid of brushing back hitters. Consequently he led the league in hit batsmen the last two seasons (30 combined) and was third in strikeouts.

And he’s versatile. He can step in if a loose cannon ever falls off Old Ironsides. In July he ran through the locker room shearing throwback jerseys with a knife because he thought wearing them would reek of commercialism. “The White Sox put business first,” he told USA Today.

(“Just wait till the Red Sox ask him to sign a brick,” joked Michael Felger on CSN’s Felger & Mazz.)

Sale was suspended five days, docked $250,000 in salary and billed $12,700 for the ruined uniforms. Someone should keep an eye him this season when he’s being battered by the Boston press corps after tough losses.

Reaction in the Windy City was one of utter resignation. In an online poll of Chicago Tribune readers, 34 percent said the Red Sox got the best of the deal, 33 percent said the White Sox did and the rest preferred to “wait and see.”

Tribune columnist Steve Rosenbloom opined that by trading their ace lefty the ChiSox had obtained four top-notch farmhands. “The glittering name is Yoan Moncada, a 21-year-old manchild who’s a five-tool, switch-hitting infielder,” wrote Rosenbloom who concluded, “The team that gets the best player wins the trade, and the Red Sox got the best player.”

The Red Sox will go into spring training armed with a starting rotation of Sale, David Price, Rick Porcello and Steven Wright that was 69-29 in 2016.

Pitchers and catchers report in 68 days.

Baseball Notes: Acquiring Sale upstaged earlier news that the Red Sox had traded third baseman Travis Shaw to the Milwaukee Brewers for setup man Tyler Thornburg. The 28-year-old Thornburg had 13 saves and a 2.15 ERA in 67 games in 2016.

Dombrowski deferred to manager John Farrell when asked if Sandoval was the heir apparent at the hot corner: “He’s gotta go back out and earn it,” said Farrell.

Michael Kopech will be bringing some baggage with his luggage to Chicago. He tested positive for an amphetimine called oxilofrine in 2015 and was suspended 50 games by MLB. The following spring he broke a bone in his pitching hand in a clubhouse fight.

With his 105 mph fast ball, he could be the next Aroldis Chapman, or the next Brien Taylor, the one-time Yankees’ phenom who ruined his career in a bar fight.

Speaking of the Yankees, GM Brian Cashman announced Tuesday that Derek Jeter’s No. 2 would be retired on May 14, which is Mother’s Day.

I mean really, Brian, is that all you got?