A sleepless week for Alex Anthopoulos put the rest of the league on notice—his Blue Jays now have everything they need to go head-to-head with the best in baseball. Here’s how he did it.

By Arden Zwelling in Toronto

Alex Anthopoulos’s phone wouldn’t work. It was Saturday, July 25—six days until the trade deadline—and Anthopoulos was 
at home, helping his wife and kids pack for a trip to Portugal with his in-laws, while simultaneously working on the structure of a potential deal for Athletics outfielder 
Ben Zobrist. “It was like, 
if you’ve ever seen Home Alone, that scene where they’re running around frantically packing,” Anthopoulos says. “And then the phone just dies.
 I was losing my mind.”

Anthopoulos resorted to using his landline to connect with Oakland GM Billy Beane before driving his family to the airport and seeing them off. He pulled out of Toronto’s Pearson International at around 5:00 p.m. and drove straight to work at the Rogers Centre, getting his cell fixed and foregoing sleep in an attempt to make his club better. He should’ve known he was in for a long week.

The events of the next six days may come to define Anthopoulos’s tenure with the Blue Jays. The 38-year-old general manager completely revamped the franchise, dealing 11 pitching prospects and shortstop Jose Reyes to acquire five major leaguers, including perennial all-stars Troy Tulowitzki and David Price—two of the best players in all of baseball. It was an astonishing week. Here’s how it happened.

After seeing one of his prime deadline targets, Cincinnati’s Johnny Cueto, traded to Kansas City the day before, Anthopoulos spent his Monday working on a bevy of potential deals. Ideally, he wanted to acquire two starters, two relievers and an outfielder, in that order of importance. He worked on potential deals for Zobrist, Milwaukee’s Gerardo Parra and Cincinnati’s Mike Leake, while testing the market on almost every player available. Then he sat down with his brain trust—vice president of baseball operations Tony LaCava, assistant GM Andrew Tinnish and special assistant Dana Brown—to make what could become the most important decision of his career as Toronto’s GM. He was going to offer the Rockies Jeff Hoffman for Troy Tulowitzki.

Anthopoulos had discussed a Tulowitzki trade with his Colorado counterpart Jeff Bridich many times, starting this past off-season when Bridich had little interest and continuing through May and June, when Anthopoulos got Bridich to agree to a Tulowitzki-for-Reyes framework but never to anything more. The pair had exchanged dozens of proposals since the all-star break. They varied greatly in size and structure, save for one key element: Bridich’s proposals always included Hoffman, and Anthopoulos’s didn’t. The last thing Anthopoulos wanted to do was trade Hoffman, the potential future ace he got in the 2014 draft at ninth overall—a first-overall talent who fell in the draft due to a recent Tommy John surgery. But eventually he swallowed the pill. “You can talk forever and offer a million different combinations,” Anthopoulos says. “But at some point you realize this probably isn’t getting done without the guy.”

At 8:00 p.m., Anthopoulos called Bridich and made a proposal that included Hoffman. “It moved so fast,” Anthopoulos says. “Lightning fast.” Toronto would send Hoffman, Reyes, Miguel Castro and Jesus Tinoco to Colorado for Tulowitzki and LaTroy Hawkins. By 11:00 p.m. the deal was done and Bridich called down to his clubhouse to have Tulowitzki removed from a game in the ninth inning, which was the moment the veteran shortstop was told he’d been traded. Anthopoulos knew he had to act quickly. He instructed members of his staff to summon Reyes and manager John Gibbons to the Rogers Centre to hear the news in person. And Anthopoulos did something he never does. He called Blue Jays president Paul Beeston after 10:00 p.m.

Beeston is known for his rigid schedule, which involves arriving at work at 7:30 a.m. every morning and going to sleep at 10:00 p.m. every night. Anthopoulos knew not to call his boss after that time unless it was a matter of crucial importance. This was the rare time that it was. Anthopoulos had secured ownership approval on a Reyes-for-Tulowitzki swap months earlier when talks first started to progress, but Beeston had always said he wanted his GM to work with him on a “no-surprises basis.” So he phoned Beeston’s home and spoke to his wife, asking her to wake up Beeston. “Hello?” came a gravelly voice a couple of minutes later. “Paul, I’m really sorry to do this, but I didn’t want you to wake up and find out without hearing from me first. We’re about to close on Tulowitzki.” Beeston was quiet for a moment as he digested the news. “Well, all right.”

Then, there was Reyes. Anthopoulos knew that once Tulowitzki found out, his teammates would find out, his agent would find out and, in short order, the entire world would find out. Anthopoulos felt it was absolutely imperative that Reyes heard the news from him personally. “Ideally, I want everyone to find out from us,” Anthopoulos says. “But Reyes is just a really great person. I really felt I owed it to him.

Reyes arrived at the Rogers Centre at 12:30 a.m., well aware something was up. While Blue Jays trainer George Poulis exchanged medical information with his Rockies counterpart Keith Dugger in one room, Anthopoulos and Gibbons broke the news to a teary-eyed Reyes in another. Reyes was quiet and emotional, not saying much other than asking who he had been traded for. Anthopoulos, ever vigilant about leaks, wouldn’t say. Reyes got up to leave, giving everyone in the room a hug before he went.

Anthopoulos and his team worked for a few more hours to finalize the deal as the details slowly trickled out across social media, startling the baseball world. He left his office around 4:30 a.m. and drove home where, 30 minutes later, he used FaceTime to talk with his wife and kids in Portugal, where it was 10:00 a.m. He told his wife, who isn’t a sports fan, that he’d just made a big trade and acquired Tulowitzki, one of the best shortstops in baseball. She wasn’t familiar with him—but she is, of course, familiar with the Jays. She asked who went the other way. “I told her I traded Reyes,” Anthopoulos says. “And she was shocked, like, ‘What? How could you?’”

Anthopoulos went to bed at 6:00 a.m., caught a quick nap, then got up at 7:30 a.m. to drive to the Rogers Centre. He made plenty of calls, working on acquiring Parra, Leake and reliever Mark Lowe from the Mariners. No one was ready to finalize a move, but he felt he was making good progress and was confident he could get the Leake deal done by the end of the week. In the afternoon, Anthopoulos held a press conference to discuss the Tulowitzki trade and talked to reporters for what felt to him like an eternity. He then went straight to the press box where he watched his Blue Jays fall 3–2 to the visiting Philadelphia Phillies. With talks having stalled for the day, Anthopoulos went home and was in bed by 11:00 p.m. And with no obligations the following morning, he decided not to set an alarm. Anthopoulos ended up sleeping straight through until 9:00 a.m., something he hadn’t done since he was a teenager. It was the best sleep he’d had in weeks. He didn’t know it at the time, but he would need it.

Anthopoulos arrived at the office mid-morning to continue working on deals for Parra and Leake. In the afternoon, he decided Leake could likely be had before the end of the day, and made a hard push with Reds GM Walt Jocketty. “We tried like hell to get it done,” Anthopoulos says.

The negotiations continued into the late afternoon when, at 5:00 p.m., Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski’s name popped up on Anthopoulos’s caller ID. A week earlier, Anthopoulos had called Dombrowski to inquire about whether or not he would be moving his staff ace and impending free agent, David Price, before the deadline. Dombrowski said the Tigers were still mulling it over, but were leaning heavily towards not trading the 2012 Cy Young winner. Anthopoulos asked Dombrowski to please give him a call if he changed his mind. For the next week, in a truly uncharacteristic move, Anthopoulos left Dombrowski alone as rumours swirled about Price being on the market. “His guarantee that he’d call me was all I needed,” Anthopoulos says. “Dave’s a complete pro. No matter what was being said in the media, I was going to take his word for it. When and if the time presented itself, he was going to call.”

And he did. The Tigers GM said he’d decided to trade Price and was calling teams to solicit offers. Anthopoulos told Dombrowski he’d be willing to create a package around any centrepiece prospect in the Jays system. He just needed to know whom. Dombrowski said he was on his way to Baltimore to meet with the rest of his front office and he’d be in touch.

Meanwhile, negotiations for Leake continued. Anthopoulos decided to push hard for the right-hander instead of waiting for Dombrowski to get back to him on Price. If the Leake deal was completed, the Blue Jays likely wouldn’t have had the prospects left to compete for Price. But Anthopoulos knew there would be several teams interested in the Tigers ace and there was no guarantee Anthopoulos would land him. Plus, he had a fallback plan; another starter he knew could be his on July 31—a deal was already agreed upon—if everything else fell through. But Anthopoulos wanted to do better. The Reds liked the Blue Jays’ offer but were waiting on separate negotiations to come to fruition before they moved Leake. Jocketty wanted to revisit talks on Thursday morning once they had heard back from other GMs. Anthopoulos accepted that, watched his team beat the Phillies and drove home, figuring he’d be hearing from Jocketty and Dombrowski in the morning. He was looking forward to another good night’s sleep. That’s when Dombrowski called.

It was 11:30 p.m. and Anthopoulos was on the phone with another GM, discussing a much smaller deal. He saw Dombrowski’s number come up and quickly jumped off the call to talk to the Tigers GM. They discussed the framework of a deal and how to proceed. Anthopoulos wanted to get the deal done that night. “Hey, if you’re willing to work, I’m willing to work,” he told Dombrowski. “I’ll go right back to the office if you really want to spend time on this.” Dombrowski, whose team became a seller late in the game, was looking to move three highly sought-after trade pieces on his roster. “I’ll stay up as long as I have to if we have a shot at getting a deal done,” he said. So Anthopoulos got in his car and drove back to the Rogers Centre. On his way, Anthopoulos called Brown, Poulis and other members of his front office, telling them to be ready to move quickly on a very big deal.

Anthopoulos got back to the office just as Wednesday became Thursday and began putting the deal together with Dombrowski over the phone. The first two pieces—Daniel Norris and Matt Boyd—were agreed upon instantly. The next three hours were spent haggling over the third. Dombrowski tried to pry several of Toronto’s top prospects away, including Anthony Alford and Dalton Pompey, before finally settling on hard-throwing Dominican Jairo Labourt at 3:00 a.m. The two GMs agreed to the proposal, pending ownership approval.

Even though Anthopoulos had broken Beeston’s 10:00 p.m. rule earlier in the week, he knew he couldn’t call now. So he went home, figuring he’d sleep for an hour or two until Beeston woke up. But Anthopoulos was too antsy, too charged up by the prospect of acquiring a pitcher who checked all of his boxes—an ace with AL East experience, a well-earned reputation as a good clubhouse presence and with no health concerns—to sleep. So he went to a café near his home that he sometimes visits because no one there knows him. He arrived at 5:45 a.m., sat down, ordered eggs, an espresso and a latte—and waited. To pass the hours he called his family in Portugal again on FaceTime. This time he didn’t tell them about work.

Anthopoulos went back to the Rogers Centre at 7:00 a.m. to wait for Beeston. But he was too anxious, so he called at 7:15 and again at 7:30, when he got Beeston on the phone and told him he could get Price. Beeston took the trade to ownership, which quickly signed off and allowed Anthopoulos to close the deal at 8:00 a.m. He then called Gibbons to tell him he’d landed Toronto’s first ace since Roy Halladay. “I was like, ‘You’re screwing with me or something,’” Gibbons says. “I didn’t believe it.”

The work didn’t end there for Anthopoulos. He spent much of his day rounding back to prior talks that he’d put on hold during the Price negotiations (talks that would eventually lead to two more moves—acquiring Lowe and Ben Revere—the next day). Anthopoulos met with the media on Thursday afternoon before going back upstairs to his office to decompress. He had been up for 34 straight hours and was starting to feel weary.

Caffeine doesn’t do much for Anthopoulos—he says he could drink a cup of coffee before he goes to sleep—so he figured he’d go home, sleep for a couple hours to recharge, and then return to the office. He got home around 6:45 p.m., flipping on the Jays game against the Royals before lying down on the couch and closing his eyes. But sleep never came. His phone was going nuts with calls, emails and texts from GMs looking to do business. Anthopoulos couldn’t ignore it. He quickly gave up on the idea of sleep and was back in the office by 8:00 p.m. After pulling off the craziest 48 hours in franchise history, Alex Anthopoulos went back to work. —WITH FILES FROM SHI DAVIDI

This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine. Photo credits: Dan Hamilton/USA Today Sports; Red Thornhill/CP; Nick Turchiaro/USA Today Sports