If you think of the baseball season as a high-stakes poker game stretched over 180 days, the Brewers pushed their chips to the center of the table Monday when they traded four minor-league prospects to Cleveland in exchange for pitcher C.C. Sabathia.

By giving up former first-round draft pick Matt LaPorta, pitchers Zach Jackson, Rob Bryson and a player to be determined later, the Brewers and general manager Doug Melvin proclaimed that the future is now and they are "going for it."

Sabathia, who won the 2007 American League Cy Young Award, makes his Milwaukee debut against Colorado tonight at Miller Park. We caught up with Melvin, the architect of the trade, shortly after the press conference that detailed one of the more significant acquisitions in franchise history.

Enjoy this Milwaukee Talks interview with Doug Melvin.

OnMilwaukee.com: Congratulations on the trade. Some teams will do anything to pump up attendance on Tuesday night.

Doug Melvin: That's one of the things I said in the press conference. I look out there on Mondays and Tuesdays and we have been getting great crowds. I not only look at box scores, I look at attendance. Our fans coming out have given us the confidence and the hope and the desire to make this trade.

OMC: Isn't this the kind of deal that you dream about when you go to general manager's school? This is a big deal for the Brewers, in terms of both what you got and what you gave up.

DM: It's a huge deal. I come from player development and scouting background. It's also difficult when you give up good young players. I've been on both ends before, where I've tried to extract the top players from another organization. In Texas, when I traded Juan Gonzalez and ended up getting players like Gabe Kapler and Francisco Cordero, they were part of a big deal.

Giving up Matt LaPorta is not easy to your player development and scouting (departments), but everybody in our organization knows what this means to our organization and they all were very supportive if we had the opportunity to get Sabathia that he could be a difference-maker for us.

OMC: It's interesting that you made a deal with Cleveland. In the 1990s, the Brewers traded Kevin Seitzer to Cleveland and got Jeromy Burnitz. A few years later, the Brewers got Richie Sexson from the Indians. Both players were all stars, but they were blocked from getting significant time with the Indians, who also traded guys like Brian Giles and Sean Casey in those days. Now, it's Cleveland that is looking to rebuild around prospects like LaPorta.

DM: Matt LaPorta will play in the big leagues and will be a good big-league player. Times change in these roles as general managers and ball clubs. Cleveland has got a very good ball club and a very good organization. They've just been decimated with injuries this year. That doesn't allow them the opportunity to compete the way they wanted. That's why they had to make a decision with C.C.

OMC: Mark Attanasio looked very happy at the press conference, especially for a guy who is picking up more than $5 million in salary. How encouraging is it to have an owner that allows you to make a move like this?

DM: It is very encouraging. He's been very good as an owner in giving us the support. There are some deals you're not going to explore in some cases. When it has a chance to make the club better, Mark is very conscious of the fans and the support that they've given the ball club. And he hears them talking about how badly they want a winner here. He backs up what he has said, too. I give him a lot of credit for that. He's allowed us to go out and do our job. He said, "The financial support is there. You and your baseball people have to decide on the prospects. That's your call."

That's all you ask for as a general manager -- to be able to have someone who gives you that ability to go out and do your job. We all know the risks involved with each one of these deals. The other part of it is managing our ball club where we have the flexibility to make these deals. We don't have a lot of what I would call bad deals, long-term bad deals that sometimes can bury a ball club and bury a franchise. We don't have those.

The main thing is if we can keep our flexibility, we're always going to be open to these kinds of deals.

OMC: You made this deal four weeks before the trading deadline. Why was that important?

DM: The advantage is getting the starts in the month of July. That's very important. That was clear with mark at the start that If we're giving up the level of a prospect of a LaPorta, we had to do it at this time. I would not have been able to give LaPorta for a rental of two months.

We evaluated each start. Five starts from C.C. Sabathia are very important. Mark (Shapiro, Cleveland's GM) understood that. That's why he cooperated and made this deal now. I've never been one to want to wait until other teams make deals, but sometimes you can't control that. We try to be aggressive. We try to be on top of things with our pro scouting staff and our front office. You just have to be ready on any given day. Somebody may call and offer you a trade that may improve your ball club.

OMC: From the outside, it appears that this deal came together quickly, but aren't trades like this always more nerve wracking than they seem?

DM: There were a couple nights there I thought we were going to make the deal and we didn't. Then a couple other clubs got involved and I said "Is this going to happen, or is it not going to happen?" Those are nights you do lay awake. It was something we really did want to have happen.

We were aggressive from the get-go with it. Mark (Shapiro) was very cooperative at getting back to me and handled it very professionally. There are some teams that you do have a little trouble with that communication and coordination with this kind of a deal. Mark did a great job from their side also in working this deal and allowing us to have C.C. on our ball club.

OMC: What impact will this trade have on the players in your clubhouse?

DM: It should be a big boost. I walked in the clubhouse yesterday about a half-hour before the game and the TVs were on. The trade talks were coming up. I was watching players watching the TVs. They'd leave their seats and go over and listen to the rumors.

They become fans, too. We're all fans of the game. They recognize it. The big left-hander that's been on the screen the last few days will now be walking around that locker room.