The NPB has thrown down a ruling in the Junichi Tazawa situation, stating that Japanese amateur players that opt to make themselves eligible to sign with major league teams will be subject to a 2-3 year ban should they ever attempt to return.
Tazawa is a Japanese amateur pitcher who in September told Nippon Professional Baseball teams he was planning to play in the major leagues and asked NPB teams not to draft him. There are some rules in place regarding this. There is a handshake agreement in place between the MLB and NPB, which according to Patrick at NPB Tracker (who has covered the Tazawa saga extensively) has been in place since 1962. In the “agreement” MLB teams agree not attempt to sign Japanese amateurs. Japanese players who are drafted and signed by home teams must wait serve seven years before they may attempt to sign with an overseas team.
Personally I think this is a joke, but I realize there are other opinions out there. Global capitalism is the system in which we live under. I’m not saying I always love and embrace every aspect of it, and it’s certainly not always fair, but it’s the same system that’s allowed Japan to become the second richest nation on the planet. If this were North Korean Pro Baseball I might be a bit more understanding. But it’s not. It’s Japan. And it’s the same system that’s currently enabling Japanese investors to snap up fledgling banks across the globe. Is NBP saying it’s not a business?
Of course it isn’t saying that. It’s simply changing the rules because it’s losing the game. Major League Baseball has the superior business model and rather than attempt to compete, the NBP is making things up as it goes along. Who loses? The players. The NPB claims it cannot compete with MLB signing bonuses because it restricts amateur signing bonuses to $1 million. Well, whose fault is that? Again, who loses?
My wife is a chemist in Korea. If an American company offers her more money to do roughly the same job she’s doing in Korea she’s free to pursue that opportunity, no? What would happen if her company decided to make a new rule that said “if an employee leaves Korea to work another job and changes their mind and wants to come back they must serve a 3-year ban.”
In the 21st century that company would lose it’s employees and there would be a strike the day of the announcement.
How absurd does this sound in this day and age? Doesn’t the notion of a company doing this make you angry? Sure baseball players make a lot of money? Should they? I suppose that’s up for debate. Can they? Absolutely and they aren’t the only ones profiting.
Taiwan has talked about, but hasn’t officially installed a similar rule. Korea had such a rule in place following the mass defections of players like Kim Byung-hyun and Choi Hee-seop in the late 90s, but rescinded said rule shortly thereafter.
5 responses so far ↓
1 simon // Oct 9, 2008 at 2:15 am
It’s a silly rule that NPB implemented after the Tazawa issue surfaced. Though NPB’s business models have many faults, it doesn’t hold tax payers ransom for new fancy baseball only stadiums, that’s one thing I don’t want NPB to copy from MLB. And that is one of the reasons why MLB has a much stronger business model than NPB, though far from the only reason. Anyways, this rule will probably come to bite NPB back in the near future when a player comes back from the States to Japan, only to be forced to play industrial ball for 3 years before qualifying to play in NPB again (by which time his peak may have already passed.) Like Bobby V said, NPB really needs to expand its minor leagues (maybe by incorporating industrial and independent leagues) so that it will have the Tazawas under their own control instead of them being “amateurs”.
2 Ray // Oct 9, 2008 at 5:39 am
What’s going to happen is that a player is going to sign with an MLB team, fail, come back to Japan and the league is going to want him playing. They’re going to use the rule differently according to the skill of the player. It won’t be fair.
That is, unless this scares high school players from signing at all…which I think is the aim of the rule.
3 Darren // Oct 9, 2008 at 10:44 am
I don’t know if that’s a legit concern Ray. I think what Simon says is correct. The NPB needs a minor league system, it need to pay their players fairly, and I think the league in general (mind you, I haven’t lived in Japan for several years) needs to be more transparent as a whole. The business model is an old one. There are other problems but those jump out tome as the most immediate.
4 DJ // Oct 9, 2008 at 11:52 am
How is an agreement not to compete between two cartels “global capitalism”? It’s about the opposite of the free market.
5 Westbaystars // Oct 9, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I don’t know about chemestry, but in the high tech market, most companies have Non-Compete clauses which don’t allow techies to go to a competitor and do a substantially similar job for at least two years after leaving the company. Many companies don’t hold their (former) employees to them, and when challenged in court (at least in California), they are often not upheld. But they do tend to be standard in contracts in North America and Japan at the least.
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