As my own futile rebellion against this destruction of the Midsummer Classic, I cannot even watch the Home Run Derby with sound without going insane, is to subject the two readers of this blog to a simple analysis of MLB’s Rule 4 and 5 draft and how it relates to football (which on this blog is used instead of soccer). Since, most people don’t know about either of these rules or football, I also see this as a public service – rebel with a cause if you will.

Let’s start with baseball before getting into third rail of sports commentary. The Rule 4 draft in June of amateurs – high school and college – is the straightforward acquisition of young talent. Most draftees are signed to minor league contracts and placed in the minors to develop their abilities, with a very select few signing major league contracts immediately. The Rule 5 draft in December consists of teams picking minor leaguers not on a team’s 40 man roster. The 40 man roster is the 40 guys that have a major league contact with the team, as opposed to a minor league contract. The club can only have 25 men up at the Major league level at a time, with the other 15 in the minors, typically Triple A. Because these 15 reservist have a major league contract, which provides them certain rights over a minor league contract, the team can quickly bring them up to the majors, as needed.

Players selected in the December Rule 5 draft must serve on the 25 man roster for a minimum of 90 days which is a lot given baseball players get maybe 5 days off a month. There are a few more rules concerning releasing players to waivers, etc. but you can read more about that here. The purpose of the Rule 5 draft is to create a market for younger players who are not amateurs and not on a 40 man roster (everyone on the ‘teh Interwebs’ says Rule 5 prevents teams from hoarding younger players, the size of the roster and the need to perform every year prevent that, Rule 5 is creating a market just as Rule 4 does with amateurs).

Essentially, its a way for players to get up to the majors if they’ve hit a glass ceiling in their current organization, for teams to fill out any offseason needs before they start planning for the Rule 4 – typically pitching, defense and speed – and for Major League Baseball to stay competitive at both the major and minor league levels – people do go to see minor league games, who can afford a $1250 Yankees ticket.

In football, on the other hand, there is an open market for players during a league ‘transfer windows’. There are preseason and mid-season transfer windows by country/league association. During these times, clubs can purchase a player from a team for a transfer fee, which in many high profile cases, exceeds the value of the new contract that player signs with the purchasing club.

Interestingly, the players contract from the club he is leaving is terminated and a new contract is drawn up with the purchasing club – not the case in MLB and I believe all US sporting associations. The transfer fees are not always paid in cash at the time of transfer, for example they may be paid as a percentage of future transfer fees received if the purchasing club sends the player off to another club or via a friendly match where the selling club books all ticket receipts. Footballers are scouted and signed into training clubs, which are somewhat like minor league clubs, and until they are 18, their transfer is made difficult by FIFA regulations but still entirely possible. Once they turn 18, the player may be transferred between clubs in the UK, EU, Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, and South America. All the while clubs that have contributed to the footballers training and football education are compensated through clear FIFA regulations.

Basically, the clubs are compensating each other for the time they have put into the player and theoretically for the future value of the player – meaning the player isn’t getting paid fair price for his athletic contribution, the equivalent of his high school coach is cashing his checks. On top of this, player protections are few and far between as far as my research can tell. “An established professional [footballer] who has, in the course of the season, appeared in fewer than ten per cent of the offi cial matches in which his club has been involved may terminate his contract prematurely on the ground of sporting just cause.” What the hell does ‘established’ mean? It’s not defined in set of regulations where I found it (here.)

It seems pretty clear to me that footballers are poorly compensated and receive few rights which entitle them to the playing time they deserve. The clubs that find and train them are well compensated and done so promptly – no later than 30 days after a player registers with a new club does that new club have to pay training compensation to the players former club(s). This system will keep the current structure of a few top teams, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Valencia, Milan, Inter, etc. – let’s call them the aristocrats – while supporting but never giving any upward mobility to the smaller clubs – let’s call them Parisian waiters.

Rule 4 and 5 don’t give power to the players, teams still have a lot of the bargaining power and can ultimately just drop a player to waivers. Worst case, with a Rule 5 draftee where they must pay the team they are drafting the player from a $50k fee, if player clears waivers (meaning no team added the player to their 25 man roster) then the original team gets the player back for $25k. Not a lot of risk, but risk management is kinda what Rule 5 is all about. That said, the Rule 5 ball players end up on a major league roster, playing in the big leagues in a big league ball park. Once they complete their 1 year mandatory service they are free agents deciding their own fate. Far better than being shipped around the globe like cattle.

FIFA needs to work on creating more fluid markets for the world’s footballing talent. This transfer system is aristocratic, old world trickery. The world seems ok with this, but football is getting big in America and “we don’t tolerate that type of shit in America, sir!” I suggest starting with eliminating the transfer system by allowing something like the Rule 5 draft with tiered and structured ‘transfer’ payments depending on the age of the player. I’d like to see players get a chance to prove their worth on the pitch and I’d definitely like to see some wizardly general management putting together competitive teams to face off against the sexy CR9 and Kaka who are sure to dominate in Real Madrid.

By the way, great book on the topic of Baseball and Football(soccer) is National Pastime by Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist.

David Moo, ridiculed anime voice actor and head bartender, works Wednesdays and Fridays. David is well known in the greater Park Slope area among civilians and service industry folk for his creative and precise cocktails, not for Xellos on The Slayers: NEXT and The Slayers: TRY. He is known even less for his wit and wisdom, the topic of this haphazard new Aantiks series, Lessons from Quarter Bar.

This past Wednesday, or was it last Friday?, I was blessed with a sneak peak at David’s new cocktail, You And Me, a play on umami as well as a little liberal counterculture news. ‘The Baffler’s Back!’ raves the Chicagoist in a bland fanboy post. The news was broken on the 24th by some news organization, honestly breaking news doesn’t matter at all anymore, that ‘Thomas Frank is reviving The Baffler, the beloved left-wing magazine of business and culture he started in Chicago in 1988.’ I stole the words in quote from The Observer which provides a quick, informative read to get you up to speed on this cult mag.

David had subscribed to first incarnation of The Baffler, as had a beautiful, married Brazilian girl sitting at the bar with her boyfriend. They gushed over its return providing me and my drunk compatriots with the facts: Frank had criticized our new found prosperity under the Clinton administration – buy now, pay interest – and the budding consumer culture that left no room for any other culture; The old mag was published sporadically, the new mag would be published twice per annum; Frank was from Chicago.

Doesn’t sound terribly counterculture does it? We all put a healthy amount of hot air into the ‘American culture of excess’ balloon. The media doesn’t though. While The Baffler’s critical pronouncements have become mainstream ideas, we still lack an authoritative, or organized, voice dedicated to this particular cultural theme. Hence the exhuming of The Baffler.

David seemed excited about The Baffler 2.0, though I didn’t get a chance to really quiz him on it – my bar mates didn’t quite understand the gravitational pull of the mainstream on fringe ideas (the mainstream is a blackhole, hehe). He made it a point to characterize the mag as counter/fringe culture with a self awareness of its own mainstream mutability. Much of what David talks about is well crafted and thoughtful, but he said this with a hint of pain in his voice. Typically there is alternately fire, love and muted condescension in his voice, but seldom real pain.

Ideas are like summer thunderstorms, hundreds of bolts of electricity arcing from an ether of clouds illuminating your own musings, before you are again left in a long drought with no complementary or supplementary flashes falling from the sky to complete your angle or turn you around. Twitter struck with a June 24th tweet from @BBHLabs asking its followers to discuss the rise of #fringeadvertising signaling the medium’s death at Adbuster Culturejammer HQ. Creative twentysomethings now scoff at older admen wtih such disdain that they forget what the true power of their creativity is. Not only is their power true, but it is great. Uncle Ben’s (Spiderman not rice) words will never be lost on our generation: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. (I’m trying to make sure the clarity this storm brought for me is not lost but attaching something rather weighty and mainstream.)

Are we to rely on old men like Thomas Frank to bail out our culture? Blogging, twittering and Facebook status updating these ideas does not a revolution make. Publishing a magazine, actually fucking publishing a magazine is way harder than blogging, has a weight and tangibility that I’m afraid the Internet does not. Even if the writing on the Internet were to get to a 9th grade level, it still seems an unlikely springboard for a modern “renaissance”. We can write creative copy,  put Patrick Ewing in a Snickers commercial, and continually polish an already shiny Apple, OR we can write about things that really matter to each of us. Possibly, in the process, spending less time in the office.

This ad is a perfect example of how in 1930 we felt the best way to optimize productivity was to have quantifiable control of time. It starts: “The value of the minute is going up fast. At the end of 1930 statistics will show that, during the year, the minute reached the peak of its importance on a dollars and cents basis.” Our thinking has certainly evolved past this anachronism (forgive the pun), but we haven’t embraced the new way of thinking that proffers a less linear, a less left brained method of management. Ultimately the problem is difficulty quantifying new methods of optimizing productivity. Who really understands the value of team building events? Who really understands the value of dispersed workforces collaborating face to face in small groups or in large groups online?

I’d like to know who else is asking these questions and where. Slowly but surely we are all dying and office culture is not enough to sustain us. We need to be elsewhere and do other things to satisfy ourselves. A change in the way that we think about human resources will allow generations of Americans to live better lives.