[Husker] MLB Draft Update

[Bob Clouston (rclousto)]

Great stuff Jeff.  But my impression was always that MLB instituted the
draft because the competition between teams was driving signing bonuses
up over $100K (when few, if any, salaries were that high), culminating
with Rick Reichart's bonus.  The shadiness might have been a factor, but
I'll bet the dollar trumped it.  That probably cut bonuses for awhile,
but know we're back to million+ dollar bonuses for busts like Brien
Taylor (got in a fight and injured his shoulder) and Josh Hamilton (got
into drugs, still trying to make it).  At least Reichart actually made
the bigs.

Re: your movie list, have you checked out Costner's other, other
baseball movie, "For Love of the Game"?  Not everyone likes it but I
thought it was very good.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Volk [mailto:jeffv at alphavideo.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 11:18 AM
To: jonlists at cbsol.com
Cc: husker at tssi.com
Subject: RE: [Husker] MLB Draft Update


The MLB Draft started in 1965. Prior to 1965 scouts would run around the
country looking at amateur players who were basically all free-agents
who could sign with the highest bidder. There are a lot of great old
stories about scouts and the lengths that they would go to in order to
sign players. Because of what became some fairly shady practices by a
lot of those scouts, baseball introduced the draft.