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Mariners GM says he traded for Dee Gordon mid-flight

Otto Greule Jr / Getty Images Sport / Getty

After meeting in Los Angeles last month with then-free agent Shohei Ohtani, instead of turning on a movie or taking a nap on the three-hour flight back to Seattle, Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto decided to do a bit of work.

Before the plane touched down, he had acquired Dee Gordon from the Miami Marlins.

"We were 25,000, 30,0000 feet up when Dee Gordon joined the Mariners," Dipoto recently told MLB.com's Greg Johns. "Once I landed back in Seattle, (Marlins president of baseball operations) Mike (Hill) asked me if that was the first deal I'd finished over text. I said, 'Mike, c'mon. When you make as many trades as we've made, you tend to do them in weird places or spaces.' But in this one, we were able to push it across in the air."

In sharing the details of the Gordon trade, Dipoto - who has made a whopping 62 trades since taking over as general manager of the Mariners in September of 2015 - offered another interesting insight into how he does business, noting that he'll often use GIFs via text in trade talks with other GMs.

"I can confirm there are many out there that will go fairly deep on the GIFs, and I'm admittedly one of those," Dipoto said. "There's a certain sector out there more likely to just play it straight with texts and some where I'll get more creative. And some where I'll get more creative in a sophomoric way, let's say.

"I have a variety of GIFs stemming from 'The Office,' Chris Farley, there's a number of Jim Carrey [GIFs] in my standard bag. There are some that, depending how things go, I have a GIF of Stephen Rea from 'The Crying Game' in the shower.

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