Friday, November 9, 2007

You Learn Something New Every Day, Week 4

For this week's YLSNED, I thought I'd go and explore some of the terms that we keep hearing associated with Alex Rodriguez an his current limbo. I know a business lesson might seem boring...okay, it's not the world's most exciting thing...but there may come a time when such terms are of interest. Also, I need to build up my vocabulary for tomorrow!

Like, now, with Alex Rodriguez.

So, without further ado, here we go!

Arbitration: Occurs when a player and team cannot agree on a salary. A player and a team will each submit a contract offer, and an arbitrator (ie, an independent judge) chooses the one that he or she feels is most fair.

The player can then accept or decline the offer.

If, for example, A-Rod accepts arbitration, he would return to the Yankees, albeit likely taking a huge pay cut, and with compensation provided to the Yankees (this is the whole Texas money thing again). If A-Rod declines arbitration, he would thus be severing ties with the Yankees.



Tampering: This one we here a lot, albeit usually in whispers, and it's fairly easy to understand. The best way to think of it is to think of it as like a false start: if a player that is a free agent or FA to-be has a deal with another team in place before the free agency period officially begins, it's tampering.

The big problem with tampering is that it is incredibly hard to prove. It's very easy to have a verbal agreement in place, and there's absolutely no way to prove that unless you're Richard Nixon and tape your phone conversations...

It's also kind of like when someone plays around with the pills in the bottle of Tylenol before the bottle is sold, but I like the false start analogy better.



Collusion: Dude, this word is actually in my GRE book! Anyway, collusion is the banding together for 'fraudulent' purposes. For example, if baseball's owners all decided to band together to not sign A-Rod or to prevent him from getting top dollar, that would be considered 'collusion'. At least, it would be considered collusion by the MLBPA. I doubt the owners would call it that...


Right, back to the other vocabulary words. I'm making my way through the list. I'm on letter I.

1 comment:

  1. Like the owners would have to band together to decide $350 mil is too much for A-Rod!. Collusion in the mind of Mr. Boras alone, I believe.

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