Sources inside the St. Louis Cardinals front office have confirmed that talks to expand the Freese-for-Bourjos trade to include Angels shortstop Erick Aybar stalled late last week after Jerry Dipoto requested a unicorn in exchange for the 29 year old infielder.

“Mo thought it was a joke,” one scout said.  “You know, just playing around with how desperate we were to fill the position.  We all had a good chuckle back in the office, but then we realized Jerry wasn’t laughing with us. The other end of the phone was dead silent.”

Once they realized that the Los Angeles General Manager of Anaheim was serious, the front office began considering euphemistic definitions that could explain the demand.  “We moved on,” the scout continued. “And thought he might be asking about a hard throwing lefty, like Kevin Siegrist. Those guys are pretty hard to find.  Maybe he wanted Yadier Molina, a catcher that could hit and play defense at an all-star level. We weren’t going to trade Yadi, but we checked to see if that’s what he meant.”

The Cardinals moved on to non-baseball definitions  of the word unicorn, offering up a creative artist who can do extensive computer coding and a single woman interested in multiple-partner sexual encounters. Eventually even John Mozeliak had to admit that there was only one plausible explanation for the continued lack of response from the Angels front office.

“We thought the only thing left to think: they really were asking for a horse with a fucking horn growing out of its head.”

An extensive search of Midwestern ranches, racetracks, and farms finally yielded hopeful results for the Cardinals.  The team was able to acquire Bo, a nine year old stallion with a fibrous tumor on the upper right side of its head that, at the correct angle, appeared to be a horn. Bo only cost the team a few hundred dollars and a set of season tickets, and for a brief moment Mozeliak thought he could pencil Aybar into the 2014 Cardinals lineup.

Then word came back that Bo had failed his physical exam in Anaheim. The reason for the failure was relayed to the team in a curt, one sentence note that accompanied the creature back to St. Louis:

“This is a horse.”

The Cardinals promptly signed Jhonny Peralta for his demands and never looked back.

When reached for comment, the Angels front office would neither confirm nor deny past negotiations surrounding Erick Aybar, but issued this statement:

“Looking at available shortstops, it is not unreasonable that a player of Aybar’s caliber would command a high price on the trade market. We are looking at many options, but we believe that a fair return would have to include a mythological creature that is entirely devoid of sin.”