Book Excerpt: Intentional Balk: Baseball's Thin Line Between Innovation and Tweeting
Chapter 7: Roster Shenanigans.
Twenty starting-pitcher wins may not mean much these days, but 20 installments in a book-excerpt series? Well, you tell me. All I’ll say is that I highly recommend every one of the 20, because they are all fascinating from cover to cover, and because they are unique, each it its own way.
Number 20 hits the mark set by the previous 19. It is “Intentional Balk: Baseball's Thin Line Between Innovation and Cheating,” by Daniel Levitt and Mark Armour (Clyde Hill Publishing, 2022, Kindle $10.99, Paperback $21.12). The thin-line-between-innovation-and-cheating subtitle is a perfect description of what you will find within, and with 53 mentions of the Dodgers in its 225 pages, there are all kinds of juicy items for fans of the Boys in Blue. There is even a chapter called called “Juice.” Additional chapter names include but are not limited to “Binoculars and Telescopes,” “Smart Watches and Trash Cans,” “Rakes and Hoses” and “Grease and Glue.”
The section I have chosen to excerpt today is “Chapter 7: Roster Shenanigans,” which begins below:
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Chapter 7: Roster Shenanigans
From the time baseball clubs began to be organized in the 1840s, team management has concentrated on finding and keeping talented players. But building a championship baseball team is an extremely challenging job. One needs to scout, sign, and develop players better than all the other ballclubs. Perhaps no other area of the game has seen such determined, inveterate rule-skirting as building a team roster.
The rules guiding team building have changed repeatedly in the past 170 years, and many of the new regulations have been implemented because teams kept breaking the old ones. Smart, resourceful teams are no different than smart, resourceful players: They will do anything to win. So leagues frequently have had to reckon with the question of how to ensure compliance, and what to do with teams that flout the rules.
One of the earliest ethical dilemmas in baseball was the prevalence of “ringers” in the 1850s. The popularity of baseball matches between the top social clubs had exploded, and the competitive nature of these clubs led to their frequently poaching players from one another. In 1856, Joseph Pinckney caused a commotion among the New York clubs when he suited up for the Gothams against the Knickerbockers, despite being a member of the Union of Morrisania, a neighboring team from the Bronx. At the time, this violated no formal rule, primarily because there was no central authority governing the game. But even in those free-for-all times, the behavior was seen as ungentlemanly.
In recognition of baseball’s growing popularity in American culture, the National Association of Base Ball Players was created in March 1858—the first formal organization governing the sport. In addition to eligibility rules (requiring that players be members of a club for at least 30 days before playing against another team), amateurism was now codified: Paying players was prohibited. Though the association established a judiciary committee to oversee disputes, in truth it lacked any meaningful enforcement authority.
Not surprisingly, many of the best teams ignored the rule prohibiting professionalism because it worked: The teams that paid players acquired the best talent. In 1860, the Brooklyn Excelsiors reportedly paid star hurler Jim Creighton, making him the first historically recognized professional. Other clubs also offered compensation, often more creatively. Al Reach, who later became a successful sporting goods manufacturer, received $25 per week from the Athletics of Philadelphia, who were paying additional players. Another future sporting goods magnate, Al Spalding, was given a grocery job sinecure at $40 a week by the Forest Citys of Rockford (Illinois), though this payment for nonwork was not considered cheating.
By the late 1860s, instances of barely concealed professionalism were rampant across the National Association, as was “revolving,” the practice of ringers jumping from team to team. At the 1868 winter meetings, Association officials threw in the proverbial towel. Forthwith, clubs would be allowed to pay players if they designated their professionals; all others would be considered amateurs. But the notion that clubs might function long-term with some paid players and some amateurs could not last—two years after the association allowed for pros, a squadron of mostly professional clubs split off, creating the National Association of Professional Ball Players, known to modern historians as the National Association.
Five years later, the 1876 launch of the National League ushered in a new era in sports. With territorial rights, a defined set of teams, and a fixed schedule, owners created value through their franchises. Once they had this foundation in place, the owners began to spend their collective energy on minimizing expenses, principally player salaries. The infamous “reserve system,” which effectively bound a player to his team for as long as the team wanted, was introduced in 1879 and expanded throughout the 1880s, with the concept enshrined in players’ contracts by 1887. As players became more valuable to their teams, owners devised new rules to increase their control and avoid a free market.
In 1885, National League owners agreed to cap individual salaries at $2,000 annually. Much like the other rules, this cap was routinely ignored. Cincinnati star Bid McPhee signed a side letter that promised him an additional $300. Boston funneled Mike “King” Kelly an extra $3,000 for his photograph. Other owners skirted the rules by signing their star players to personal service contracts.
Until the late 1880s there was no formal mechanism to sell or trade players. John B. Day, a principal in the group that owned the New York franchises in both the National League and the American Association (a major league between 1882 and 1991), wanted to transfer two of his stars, hurler Tim Keefe and third baseman Dude Esterbrook, from his American Association team to his National League team. But since contracts could not yet be transferred, he had to release the players from one team, then re-sign them with the other. As Day knew, the owners of the two leagues had agreed that any player who was released or became a free agent had to wait 10 days and be passed over by all the teams in his own league before he could sign with the other. To sidestep this rule, Day put both Keefe and Esterbrook on a cruise to Bermuda with manager Jim Mutrie, making them inaccessible. Mutrie then signed both players at the end of the 10-day waiting period. For this deceit the AA considered expelling Day, but in the end merely fined him.
Another hullaballoo came at the tail end of the 1885 season, when the Detroit Wolverines purchased the entire Buffalo Bisons franchise in order to acquire Buffalo’s “Big Four”: Dan Brouthers, Hardy Richardson, Jack Rowe, and Deacon White. Now in control of two National League teams, the Wolverines owners released the stars from their Buffalo contracts and signed them for Detroit. The other owners, several of whom wanted these players for themselves, ruled that none of the Big Four could sign for 1886 until October 20. Amenable to joining Detroit, the four players went off to enjoy a clandestine fishing and hunting vacation in the isolated St. Clair flats, arranged by Detroit ownership so that they could not be approached by competing teams. On October 20, they returned, all signed up and ready for 1886.
Although so-called “minor” leagues began forming in the 1880s, they still operated independently from the majors. Minor league teams competed for their leagues’ pennants just as hard as major league teams, and their fans were just as rabid. If a player was good enough for the next level, his minor league team could sell him to a higher league or keep him. Under such a system, where players had no control over what team or league they played in, the potential for abuse was nearly limitless.
Eventually the various leagues banded together to create controls for player movement that offered small protections to the athletes and structured the relationship between major and minor leagues. The new arrangement started with a draft that allowed teams to claim players from lower leagues. This gave priority to the higher leagues in securing players and a mechanism for players to advance up the ladder. Additionally, provisions were made so that a team could send a player to a lower league for further development under an optional assignment. The higher-league team had the right to repurchase the player but with checks on how many times and for how long it could do so with any individual. There were further restrictions on how many players a team could control, keeping a team from signing dozens of prospects and farming them all over the country to friendly minor league owners.
The details of both the draft and optional assignments changed regularly. But inevitably, as soon as a new rule appeared, owners attempted to exploit its loopholes, engaging in all manner of chicanery to control as many players as possible, as cheaply as possible, and for as long as possible. Leagues redoubled their efforts, trying to make it harder to cheat. But as always, teams found innovative ways of bending or breaking the rules. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the National Commission—baseball’s governing three-person body—spent much of its time adjudicating player-control disputes. But it was all done rather loosely. When Kennesaw Mountain Landis became commissioner in 1920, he took a much harder line on abuses of covert player control.
There were many examples. In November 1921, Landis declared six players free agents for illegal “gentlemen’s agreements” between major and minor league operators. All six had been sent to the minors without clearing waivers or a formal option agreement. This surreptitious farming of the players, Landis ruled, had cheated other ballclubs of a chance to claim them and allowed their own teams to control more than the officially allotted maximum. Of course, it also cheated the players out of a chance to move to another major league team.
The following year, shortstop Ray French and pitcher Jess Doyle, both New York Yankee prospects, toiled for the Vernon Tigers in the Pacific Coast League under optional assignments. With no open spots on the Yankees and their option period expiring, Yankees GM Ed Barrow supposedly surrendered control and turned the players over to Vernon. Nevertheless, in January 1923 Barrow sent a telegram to several other Pacific Coast League clubs offering French and Doyle in trade, indicating that in reality he still controlled these players through a friendly agreement with Vernon. One of the PCL teams sent Commissioner Landis a copy of the telegram. Landis ruled that Vernon and New York had illegally conspired to control the two players and declared them free agents. This was typical of the era. If Landis found out about a violation, he acted, but he did not have the budget or staff to actively monitor every infraction.
In the early 1920s, with the costs of star players from the minors skyrocketing, St. Louis Cardinals GM Branch Rickey devised a strategic idea to circumvent some of the player-control constraints: baseball’s first “farm system.” Rickey rightly recognized this investment as a means to acquire more ballplayers cheaply.
Only a few years after Rickey’s innovation, big league teams predictably began using their minor league clubs to skirt player-control rules. In fact, Commissioner Landis’s first court challenge stemmed from such an action. The St. Louis Browns had optioned outfielder Fred Bennett to Tulsa early in 1928. Later that season they canceled their option—a team was limited to having eight players out on option, so these were valuable rights—meaning they no longer controlled him. Bennett ended up with Wichita Falls. But when the Pirates tried to acquire him, they were told that the Browns had first dibs. The Browns repurchased Bennett for less than the Pirates had offered, and then optioned him to Milwaukee.
Landis rightly found that St. Louis’s control over Bennett was illegitimate, hurting Bennett’s chance for a major league career and cheating other teams out of his skills. Browns owner Phil Ball sued Landis, claiming illegal interference in his business. It was not the strongest case to take to court, but the facts were not really in question. The issue was the reach of Landis’s authority, and the court ruled that it encompassed matters of player control.
A few years later Landis faced a similar case of team overreach with a much more important player. In 1935, Cleveland general manager Cy Slapnicka signed Iowa high schooler Bob Feller, one of the nation’s top prospects. This was against the rules, as only minor league teams could sign sandlotters. To get around that inconvenience, Slapnicka signed Feller to a Fargo-Moorhead contract, which was promptly transferred to New Orleans, and then to Cleveland. This was all a ruse, as Feller never appeared in the minor leagues. The transfers were prearranged, a blatant violation brought to light by the Des Moines club that had hoped to sign him. Despite his disdain for this practice, Landis allowed Feller to remain with the Indians, swayed by the fact that Feller did not want to be made a free agent. He also was likely influenced by big league owners, who had enacted a rule change permitting a major league team to recommend a player to the minors and act as a conduit.
Six months after his decision in the Feller case, Landis was not so generous with Slapnicka. He declared outfielder Tommy Henrich a free agent after Cleveland secretly orchestrated his transfer from New Orleans to Milwaukee to maintain extralegal control, a breach Henrich (unlike Feller) protested. Henrich subsequently signed with the Yankees and became one of baseball’s top outfielders.
Rickey, one of baseball’s greatest innovators, who is justifiably venerated for his role in integrating baseball after the war, also perpetuated one of the largest player control cheating operations in the sport’s history. With baseball’s most-extensive farm system, Rickey’s Cardinals had an affiliate in nearly every minor league. To secure even greater coverage, beginning in 1936 Rickey created a second, shadow farm system through his relationship with the Single-A Cedar Rapids club. Cedar Rapids created working relationships with teams in the very same leagues where St. Louis had affiliates, allowing the Cardinals to control multiple teams that were supposed to be competing with one another. Confronted with this blatant rules violation, Landis declared 74 Brooklyn farmhands to be free agents, including outfielder Pete Reiser, who went on to star in the majors.
In 1940, the Tigers suffered a similar fate for a similar crime, in addition to other illegal arrangements. Landis placed the blame squarely on GM Jack Zeller, and in consequence, released nearly 100 players. This time, many of the players were at higher levels or even on the major league club—Detroit was left with only 78 players in their entire organization. A couple were significant losses, most notably Roy Cullenbine.
Landis realized that to end these violations he needed harsher penalties, and with his Detroit ruling he placed the accountability on front office executives. “Notice is hereby given all clubs, club officials and employees,” Landis wrote in his decision, “that the evils of common control of player dealings of two clubs in the same league, and perversion of ’working agreements‘ into arrangements … for the wholesale ’covering up‘ of players must cease; and that all club officials and employees found to be involved in any such misconduct after this date will be placed on the illegible list [suspended], maximum files will be imposed on each club concerned, and all players mishandled therein will be declared free agents.” Landis’s threat eliminated the most blatant player-control abuses.
Meanwhile, Landis and his small staff also tried to police scouting violations. Stories were widespread of scouts acting dishonestly to hide coveted players from other scouts, though many were likely apocryphal. Most have come down through history as part of the cat-and-mouse lore around scouting competition, though they clearly had consequences, for both players and teams. Longtime scout Hugh Alexander remembered getting called into Landis’s office on suspicion that he had postdated contracts for young players. During most of Landis’s tenure, a prospect was not eligible to be signed until either he or his high school class had graduated. Alexander and other scouts were often guilty of skirting this rule. “Mr. Alexander,” Landis told him, “I understand that you have been signing some boys before they graduate from high school and then postdating the contracts.… If I catch you postdating contracts, Mr. Alexander, I’ll throw you out of baseball. You understand me?” Landis never followed through on this threat, but Alexander and his fellow scouts, for the most part, abided by the rules.
While the Negro Leagues didn’t create extensive farm systems built around a hierarchy of leagues, they were not immune to player-control battles. In 1933, Homestead Grays owner Cum Posey signed two players from the cash-strapped Detroit Stars at midseason. Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee, the Negro National League’s most powerful executive and Posey’s rival for the Pittsburgh market, was so angered at what he considered an unethical breach that he had the Grays expelled from the league. Publicly, Posey shrugged off this blow, claiming that he could better survive as an independent team anyway. But the dismissal clearly hurt. Two years later, in 1935, the Grays were back in the league.
While some of these stories are well known, it is worth considering that Rickey, Zeller, Slapnicka, and others have largely been given a pass for their actions. They broke the rules repeatedly, to help themselves or their teams, often to the detriment of young players’ careers and lives. Historians, however, have treated them merely as competitive men who carried things too far. This kid-glove treatment stands in sharp contrast to the way that twenty-first-century cheaters, especially players, are viewed.
After World War II, farm systems became more institutionalized, and the most brazen cheating receded. But the malfeasance had not vanished; it merely took on a new form. Now that amateurs were free to sign with whomever they chose, competition to recruit the best prep and college players was intense, and bonuses skyrocketed as postwar baseball attendance ballooned. To keep a grip on costs and minimize these bonuses, baseball began instituting disincentives.
The first bonus rule, introduced in 1947, required that any amateur signed for more than $6,000 (including his first-year salary) must be put on the major league roster after one season or be placed on irrevocable waivers. But cheating on bonuses was so prevalent that after the season baseball required that both the player and team sign an affidavit swearing no consideration had been paid outside of the stated terms of the contract. The Pittsburgh Pirates, for example, were fined $2,000 and the farm director $500 for hiring a signee’s father as a part-time scout.
Tired of all the chicanery, and the policing it required, the owners gave up on their bonus rule after the 1950 season. As a result, bonuses continued to balloon—one baseball official estimated that they totaled $4.5 million in 1952 alone.
The owners tried again with a more restrictive rule. From 1953 to 1957, any player who received a bonus of more than $4,000 had to be kept on the major league roster for two seasons before he could be sent to the minors. If the player was assigned to the minors before the end of the two-year period, he was subject to an unrestricted draft and available to all other teams. There was the occasional payoff—Sandy Koufax, Harmon Killebrew, and Al Kaline—but their names were swamped by the Billy Consolos and Vic Janowiczes.
Nevertheless, enforcement again proved difficult, and cheating was rampant.
Longtime Orioles scout Jim Russo believed the behavior was nearly universal. “I think we’re all cheating,” farm director Jim McLaughlin told him, “except maybe two or three clubs.” Russo recalled that Orioles GM Paul Richards “could cheat as well as anybody.” According to Russo, Dutch Dietrich, an area scout for the Orioles, would pass a satchel of cash to a person riding on a train as it rode slowly through a Texas town, without the train ever stopping; that person would route the cash to the player. According to one story, Dietrich and the person on the train once missed the handoff, and $100 bills fluttered across the Texas countryside. Russo had few qualms about any of this behavior: “I didn’t deny that we were cheating. We had no other choice. It was cheat or finish in last place, which would be cheating our fans as well as risking our whole business. This wasn’t college. This was a fight for survival.” Although this attitude has persisted in baseball for 170 years, Russo enunciated it so clearly that we will call this rationale the Russo Doctrine.
Five years of the bonus rule and all of its attendant issues proved to be enough for the owners. After the 1958 season they instituted a new plan—the first-year player draft. If a player was not protected by being placed on the major league 25-man roster after his first year in the minors, he could be drafted by any team. The theory was that teams would not invest so heavily in youngsters if they were at risk of losing them after one year. No one liked this rule, and it didn’t cut down on the biggest bonuses—it merely moved money from the middle class of prospects to the few at the top because teams could reasonably carry one or two on their 25-man squads. The owners tweaked the particulars several times but never succeeded in striking a balance they were happy with.
The amateur draft, finally introduced in 1965, slowed significant cheating over amateur players. It’s surprising that baseball took so long to settle on this solution. The NFL started their draft in 1936, and the NBA in 1947, but baseball played around with several poorly executed half-measures before falling into line. Originally, there were three separate amateur drafts, the largest in June, for most players; another in August, for summer league players; and one in January for fall graduates. The August draft existed for just two years, and the January one until 1986.
In the first January draft, in 1966, the Atlanta Braves selected USC pitcher Tom Seaver. After the draft, Atlanta needed to act quickly because teams were not allowed to sign players once their college season started. In this case, the Braves (and Seaver) missed their deadline, signing after USC had played a couple of early season games. USC coach Rod Dedeaux, who naturally wanted to keep Seaver, reported the violation to Commissioner William Eckert.
Eckert voided Seaver’s contract, and when the NCAA ruled Seaver ineligible because he had signed, Seaver suddenly had nowhere to go. Braves GM John McHale defended the signing, arguing that the USC season started earlier than most, and the team hadn’t had enough time to negotiate with him. The system was brand new, so the Braves can perhaps be forgiven. But it is also likely they were aware of the rule and figured they could get away with it.
Fearing a legal battle, Eckert held a lottery for any team (except the Braves) that would meet the terms Seaver had signed for ($40,000 plus $11,000 to finish his education). For perspective, in the June 1965 draft only 13 players received bonuses of $40,000 or more. Seaver was highly regarded, but not necessarily viewed as a top talent. In any event, only three teams put their hats in the ring: the New York Mets, the Cleveland Indians, and the Philadelphia Phillies. The Mets won. The Braves were not disciplined further, but losing out on Tom Seaver was surely punishment enough.
In 1978 the Seattle Mariners with the sixth pick in the draft selected outfielder Tito Nanni. But Nanni wanted more than the team was willing to pay, so the parties resorted to financial subterfuge. They agreed to a bonus below Nanni’s price while forging a side agreement with him to make it up in salary during Nanni’s first years in the minors. Such an agreement violated baseball’s rules, which only permitted one-year contracts for draftees. When the deal came to light, the Mariners had to restructure the contract.
After nearly five decades, the owners came to believe that their draft no longer sufficiently curbed signing bonuses. Accordingly, the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement capped bonuses that could be paid to draftees, and specified penalties for exceeding the cap. Each draft pick was assigned a “slot value” and the sum of these slot values totaled the bonus pool available to spend on draft picks. Although financial cheating has become harder to get away with, Braves GM John Coppolella offered a 2017 draft pick “impermissible benefits” to lessen his signing bonus, thereby leaving more bonus money for their other draft picks. As punishment, Commissioner Manfred docked the Braves their third-round pick the following year. This punishment was mild when compared with what the Braves would face in 2019.
The rules governing non-U.S. players, who are not covered by the draft, have changed many times over the years as well, and front offices have violated those rules just as enthusiastically as they violated the previous ones. Ostensibly, all non-U.S. amateurs are free agents, but there have been policies in place regarding which countries can be scouted, the age of players in question, the size of their bonuses, and more.
In 1974, the Montreal Expos were the only non-U.S. team in the major leagues and therefore the only club not subject to the U.S.’s prohibition on traveling to Cuba. Regardless of the existence of flights from Canada to Cuba, U.S. citizens were still prohibited from traveling there. Nonetheless, Expos scouting director Mel Didier flew to Cuba to meet with the Cuban national team and exchange ideas for coaching and instruction. Didier attempted to convince Cuban authorities to allow the Expos to sign a few players, but he was turned down. In any case, it’s doubtful that this would have worked. When Commissioner Kuhn learned of the trip, he threatened Didier with a two-year suspension if it happened again.
New York Mets scout Red Murff held tryout camps in Puerto Rico in the mid-1960s, according to Murff a violation of Puerto Rican rules. Murff recalls finding several useful players in these tryouts, including hurler Ed Figueroa. Dodger scout Hugh Alexander was fined $500 by the commissioner’s office for a tryout camp in the U.S. because one of the attendees didn’t have the permission slip required of all participants.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, teams spent increasing time and energy trying to find players in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, efforts that have dramatically transformed the game in the past 40 years. The Giants and the Dodgers had been active there for some time. But Toronto Blue Jays GM Pat Gillick dramatically increased MLB’s presence when he teamed up with longtime colleague and Dominican scout Epy Guerrero to build the first rudimentary baseball academy in the Dominican Republic. As with Branch Rickey and the farm system, both the Blue Jays and Dodgers found ways to skirt the rules to their benefit.
As Latin America became increasingly competitive, teams tried to sign players at ever younger ages, which had the advantage of providing a longer development runway while reducing a player’s signing bonus. In 1984, when it came out that the Toronto Blue Jays had signed 13-year-old Jimy Kelly to a $5,000 bonus, baseball instituted a rule requiring that a player turn 17 by the end of his first professional season in order to be eligible.
As soon as the age minimum was in place, teams began working to get around it, and many were caught. In 1999, Tommy Lasorda, then a Los Angeles Dodgers front office executive, said, “I bet you there’s 50 ballplayers in the major leagues that have signed illegally.” Lasorda was expressing his frustration after Commissioner Bud Selig had voided the signing of two young Cuban signees, making them free agents, and fined the Dodgers $200,000. But the immediate cause of Lasorda’s outburst was an impending ruling over another premature signee, young third baseman Adrián Beltré, whose birth certificate the Dodgers later admitted doctoring. Because Selig ruled that Beltré was, at the very least, complicit in the deception, Selig did not make him a free agent but barred the Dodgers from signing or scouting players in the Dominican Republic for a year. Nonetheless, one year later the Dodgers were fined $100,000 for signing underage Dominican Felix Arellan in March 1996 when he was 15. The Braves were also discovered to have signed two underage Dominican players, Winston Abreu and Wilson Betemit.
Beltré notwithstanding, players discovered to have signed before they were of age were typically declared free agents. After the Marlins were caught in 1996 signing 14-year-old Dominican pitcher Ricardo Aramboles for $5,500, Selig released him. Later, Aramboles signed with the Yankees for $1.52 million (at this time the minimum signing age was 16).
In 2002, Cleveland was penalized $50,000 and assessed a two-month suspension of their Venezuelan activities for the 1998 signing of 15-year-old Laumin Bessa. Scout Luis Aponte had inked Bessa to a blank contract, reportedly to be completed after the player turned. When confronted, Aponte replied, “In life, things happen that you can’t explain.” No doubt. To keep their rivals away, Cleveland stashed Bressa in their academy until he was 16. This was neither unusual nor egregious. “In a measure of the degree of corruption that exists in Latin American baseball,” wrote a reporter, “the Indians opted not to fire Aponte after deciding he was following normal business practices.”
One of the first clubs to organize training in Venezuela, the Houston Astros, skirted the age restrictions in the late 1990s by opening their facility to players before they were eligible to be signed. But when the Astros found legitimate underage prospects, the temptation proved overpowering, and they took measures to prevent them from talking with competitors. Once the commissioner’s office realized what was going on, the practice was banned; only players 16 or older could attend the academies.
The next Latin American cheating scandal didn’t erupt until the next significant policy change, in the mid-2010s. In the meantime, bonuses had exploded and baseball scouts from several teams were caught skimming money earmarked for the players. In yet another attempt to get control over bonuses, the owners resorted to a variation of their failed 1950s concept: a ceiling, this time in the form of a cap (bonus pool) on what each team could spend for international players. Teams with poorer records in the previous season were allocated more money. Teams could exceed the cap for one season but would have a reduced pool in subsequent years.
The Red Sox were the first team publicly exposed for evading the cap. After their 2015 signing of Cuban Yoan Moncada put them well over the ceiling, Boston was limited to a bonus of $300,000 for any individual player during the following signing period. No matter. The Red Sox skirted the threshold by bundling lesser prospects with stars, and instructing the agents to redistribute most of the money to the better prospects. As punishment, Commissioner Manfred declared five players free agents and barred Boston from signing any international free agents for a year.
Attesting to the seriousness with which baseball viewed these violations, the 2016 CBA included a list of cap evasions that were now considered cheating and subject to discipline. The Atlanta Braves committed several violations anyway. First, they sidestepped the cap by paying inflated amounts to foreign professionals (defined as older players with professional experience who did not count against the cap), with the excess payments redirected to young prospects. In a dodge similar to Boston’s, Atlanta also packaged bonuses to multiple players represented by the same buscón (a combination agent and trainer), with the bonuses redistributed. In a third ruse, the Braves signed several players represented by a buscón at above-market values so he would direct a different client, in this instance shortstop Robert Puason, to sign with them in the future. The Braves also signed South Korean shortstop Ji-hwan Bae for $300,000, while agreeing to pay him another $600,000 on a side letter.
Commissioner Rob Manfred lowered the boom. Thirteen players in Atlanta’s organization, representing roughly $16.5 million in bonuses, were declared free agents. The Braves’ international bonus pools were slashed for several years. Special assistant Gordon Blakeley was suspended for a year. Most dramatically, general manager John Coppolella was placed on baseball’s permanently ineligible list. President of baseball operations John Hart was not implicated in the commissioner’s report but left the organization to “pursue other opportunities.” Manfred’s severe penalties had finally made the costs associated with skirting bonus rules prohibitive.
One final form of cheating must be noted here. Baseball has long had a rule prohibiting a team from “tampering,” expressing interest in acquiring an opposing player, either to the player or even to a reporter. Until 1976 this didn’t really matter—players were bound by the reserve clause, and what the player wanted was largely irrelevant. But when the players gained free agency following the 1976 season, tampering suddenly mattered. Not surprisingly, it was only a matter of weeks before the first case was exposed.
In November 1976, the Atlanta Braves signed free agent outfielder Gary Matthews, but Commissioner Kuhn ruled they had had inappropriate conversations with Matthews prior to the free agent draft. Moreover, Braves owner Ted Turner had told Giants’ owner Bob Lurie that “no matter what you offer Gary, we’ll do better.” Kuhn leveled a stiff penalty: the loss of the Braves’ two top draft choices (their first in both the June and January phases of the amateur draft), a $10,000 fine, and a one-year suspension for Turner. The team contested Kuhn’s penalties in court and managed to salvage their June draft pick. Although accusations of tampering still occur now and again, Kuhn’s stiff penalties have mostly prevented it.
The rules and restrictions around roster management have changed many times over the past 150 years, but one thing remains constant: teams trying to evade them. The people running teams are as competitive as their players, and no less likely to transgress. A cap on international bonuses, like virtually every rule discussed in this chapter, has the twin goals of reducing money going to players and keeping rich teams from signing more than their share.
But while rewards for cheating in roster building can be large— fame, money, championships—the risks have often been very low.
About the authors:
Daniel R. Levitt is the author of several award-winning baseball books and numerous essays. His previous books include Paths to Glory; Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty; The Battle that Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy; and In Pursuit of Pennants. Dan currently serves as treasurer of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and is the co-chair of SABR's Business of Baseball committee. More on Dan can be found here.
Mark Armour is an award-winning writer living in Corvallis, Oregon. He is the author or co-author of several previous books on baseball, including Paths to Glory; Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball; Pitching, Defense and Three-Run Homers; The Great Eight; and In Pursuit of Pennants. For SABR, he founded the Baseball Biography Project and the Baseball Cards Committee, and currently serves as the President of the Board of Directors. More on Mark can be found here.