The Doubleday Code - So Dark the Con of MLB (p.1) - Luke Hochevar No. 1 Draft Poses Mythology of Baseball Problems - MLN Sports Zone

The DoubleDay Code - So Dark the Con of MLB (Major League Baseball)

The Doubleday Code
So Dark the Con of MLB.

Luke Hochevar's No. 1 pick in the June MLB Draft 2006 exposes an old, dark secret of Major League Baseball. If the independent pro leagues outside the MLB system can be home to the draft's top pick for a season and a half, who is a pro, and who is an amateur? Will there be more?

Brian Ross
Sr. Editor
MinorLeagueNews.com

06.09.06 - Luke Hochevar was the no. 1 pick in the 2006 Major League Baseball draft. That's a problem for the mythology merchants of MLB and its Doubleday Code.

For, as everyone knows, there is no baseball outside of the sanctioned world of MLB and its highly regulated "minor" leagues. That is, if your baseball theology calls you to ignore the existence of the Atlantic, the Can-Am, the Northern, and the Golden Baseball leagues as well as the new American Association.

When pressed to face that reality, the MLB spin merchants call them the leagues of the old, dead and dying.

Yet, every year, more and more players, whose careers aren't tracking in the MLB system the way that they would like to move, are parked in the indy leagues.

Hochevar was listed in his No. 1 pick in the June 2006 Major League Baseball draft as "No School" as if he was some amateur sitting around cooling his heels. He's been playing independent league professional baseball for roughly a season with the Fort Worth Cats, formerly of the Central Baseball League (CBL), now of the newly-reformed American Association (AA).

MiLB nor MLB keep records of how many indy players have been drafted in the top ten, let alone number one. It is one of the dark records that those in Opus Babe, obsessed with history and records, don't record.

A parishioner of the Church of Scott Boris, super sports agent, Hochevar has one of the greatest power brokers in baseball behind him.

Luke's position in the draft in 2005, where he went to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Compensation Round as 40th overall (OA)(See MLB Draft 2005), was lower than expected. The Pope of Players didn't like the Dodgers $11 million offer either. So he parked Hochevar in the indy league to keep him on his game while they waited for a better deal.

That's the problem for the One True Professional Baseball. This draft, by tradition, has been an "amateur" draft. How amateur is Hochevar, playing for professional Fort Worth for a season and a quarter? Should he even have been drafted, rather than just signing him as a free agent?

The David Copperfields of MLB.com

The treatment of Hochevar's draft at MLB.com, the mouthpiece of Major League Baseball, represented an attempt at maintaining the line against independent leagues. First Hochevar was served up as "No School." Then the early images of him were in his college uniform with the University of Tennessee Volunteers.

After the draft was over, and fewer people were looking, the artwork on MLB.com for Hochevar featured him in his Fort Worth Cats jersey, minimized as best as possible. MLB's spin on the same page was that Hochevar had been playing in "indy baseball," without props to team or league.

Hochevar was called "rusty" by the dutiful MLB.com writer who likes keeping his job.

How "rusty" could Hochevar be to get tagged no. 1?

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