“Well, I expect to make it my business—if I can make good.”
“I think you will.”
“But I don’t intend to stay in this small league forever,” went on Joe. “I’d like to get in a major one.”
“That isn’t as easy as it seems,” said the other college lad. “You know you’re sort of tied hand and foot once you sign with a professional team.”
“How’s that?”
“Why, there is a sort of national agreement, you know. No team in any league will take a player from another team unless the manager of that team gives the player his release. That is, you can quit playing ball, of course; but, for the life of you, you can’t get in any other professional team until you are allowed to by the man with whom you signed first.”
“Well, of course, I’ve read about players being given their release, and being sold or traded from one team to another,” spoke Joe, “but I didn’t think it was as close as that.”
“It is close,” said Hall, “a regular ‘trust.’ Modern professional baseball is really a trust. There’s a gentleman’s agreement in regard to players that’s never broken. I’m sorry, in a way, that I didn’t stay an amateur. I, also, want to get into a big league, but the worst of it is that if you show up well in a small league, and prove a drawing card, the manager won’t release you. And until he does no other manager would hire you. Though, of course, the double A leagues can draft anyone they like.”
Joe whistled softly.
“Then it isn’t going to be so easy to get into another league as I thought,” he said.