The posting system is a baseball player transfer system which operates between Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and the United States' Major League Baseball (MLB). Despite the drafting of the United States – Japanese Player Contract Agreement in 1967 designed to regulate NPB players moving to MLB, problems arose in the late 1990s. Some NPB teams lost star players without compensation, an issue highlighted when NPB stars Hideo Nomo and Alfonso Soriano left to play in MLB after using loopholes to void their existing contracts. A further problem was that NPB players had very little negotiating power if their teams decided to deal them to MLB. In 1998, the Agreement was rewritten to address both problems and was dubbed the "posting system". Under this system, when an NPB player is "posted", MLB holds a four-day-long silent auction during which MLB teams can submit sealed bids in an attempt to win the exclusive rights to negotiate with the player. If the MLB team with the winning bid and the NPB player agree on contract terms before the 30-day period has expired, the NPB team receives the bid amount as a transfer fee, and the player is free to play in MLB.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_system

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1565:

The Portuguese founded Rio de Janeiro. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_de_Janeiro

1700:

Sweden introduced its own Swedish calendar in an attempt to reform into the Gregorian calendar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_calendar

1872:

Yellowstone National Park, located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, one of the first national parks in the world, was established. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park

1944:

American and Australian troops won the Battle of Sio in New Guinea, killing more than 2,000 Japanese troops. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sio

1956:

The NATO phonetic alphabet, today the most widely used spelling alphabet, was first implemented by the International Civil Aviation Organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICAO_spelling_alphabet

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

demesne (n): A lord’s chief manor place, with that part of the lands belonging thereto which has not been granted out in tenancy; a house, and the land adjoining, kept for the proprietor’s own use http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/demesne

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. --Frédéric Chopin http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin