1. I was just browsing
That morning, I sat at my desk with a cup of freshly brewed coffee that hadn’t cooled down yet.
I turned on my computer—an old machine that made a loud noise when it started up, like a tractor.
I typed a few words into the search bar: “1968 baseball draft.”
To be honest, I didn’t expect to find anything special.
It was fifty years ago. Who would remember who was ranked where in the draft?
I thought it was just a piece of historical record, and I would close it after checking.
But the more I looked, the more something didn’t feel right.
Many articles online mentioned, “1968 was an important year.”
But no one explained why it was important.
2. At first, I only saw a bunch of “ordinary” names
I went to a website called “Baseball Reference,” which specializes in baseball history.
There, I found the complete list of the 1968 draft.
It read:
– The first pick was Tim Foli, a shortstop;
– The fourth pick was Thurman Munson, who later became the Yankees’ starting catcher.
I had heard of a few of these names, but most of them were unfamiliar to me.
And looking at their careers, none of them seemed to be particularly outstanding superstars.
Some played for a few years and then disappeared, with mediocre statistics.
At the time, I thought:
“This is what they mean by ‘important’? This?”
I felt like I had wasted my time.
I closed the page, took a sip of coffee, and got ready to do something else.
3. A change in perspective revealed the real story
But I didn’t give up completely.
I thought about it some more: maybe the question wasn’t “who was selected,” but “what happened at that time.”
So I stopped searching for “1968 draft list” and changed it to:
– “1968 baseball draft changes”
– “Why was the draft system introduced?”
– “How do teams select new players?”
This time, I found an old article from a baseball research organization called SABR.
The article wasn’t about player performance, but about how chaotic the entire draft system was that year.
The more I read, the more surprised I became.
It turns out that before 1968, professional baseball in the US didn’t have the “draft system” we are familiar with today.
Want to join a Major League team?
You didn’t wait for the teams to pick you in order, but rather, whichever team found you first and offered you money, you belonged to them.
In other words, as long as you were good enough, whoever offered you the most money, you went to them.
Doesn’t that sound a bit like selling goods?
4. Rich teams “poach” players, while poor teams can only watch
That year, many talented high school graduates who had not yet entered college were targeted by professional teams.
Rich teams like the New York Yankees offered high-priced contracts: “Come to us, and we’ll give you $10,000!”
In 1968, $10,000 was a lot of money.
Many families agreed immediately upon hearing this.
But the problem was:
Teams in small cities didn’t have the money to compete.
They could only watch as all the good prospects were snapped up by the big teams.
This led to a situation where:
The strong teams got stronger, and the weak teams didn’t even have a chance to get new players.
The entire system became extremely unfair.
V. Chaos Reaches Its Peak, and the League Finally Takes Action
This chaotic situation continued for a year, and the league management could no longer sit idly by.
They realized that if things continued this way, the games would lose their meaning—
because the gap in strength between teams would continue to widen.
So they decided:
Starting in 1969, they would officially implement the “June amateur draft system.”
What does this system mean?
Simply put:
– All new players must participate in a unified draft;
– Teams select players in reverse order of their previous year’s performance (the worse the performance, the earlier the selection);
– It is forbidden to privately offer money to poach players.
This way, weaker teams have the opportunity to pick the best players first and gradually become stronger;
stronger teams cannot monopolize talent with money.
The starting point for all these changes was the “money war” of 1968.
6. So, why is this draft important?
Now you understand, right?
The 1968 draft was important not because it selected many star players,
but because it exposed the failure of the old system and forced the league to reform.
It’s like your water pipe has been leaking, but you’ve been too lazy to fix it.
Until one day, the living room is flooded, and you have no choice but to replace the pipe.
1968 was the year the living room flooded.
Since then, all new MLB players have had to enter the professional league through the draft.
The “first-round picks” and “high draft picks” we see today are rules that were established at that time.
7. I have a new understanding of the meaning of “history.”
Writing this, I realized something myself:
When we look at history, we often focus only on “who won” and “who played the best.”
But we forget to ask: Why did things turn out the way they are today?
The 1968 draft list itself was not particularly exciting,
but the story behind it changed the future of baseball.
It’s like how you use your phone to go online now and think it’s perfectly normal.
But have you ever thought about who invented the smartphone?
Who made the internet so convenient?
These changes often don’t come from a single hero, but from a failure, a mess, or a decision that had to be made.
8. Conclusion: It’s not the name that matters, but the change it brings
So, next time you see the words “1968 MLB Draft,”
don’t rush to find out who was picked first or who didn’t make it.
Think about what happened that year:
A group of young men who hadn’t even made it to the professional league were being fought over;
the league panicked and said, “This can’t go on.”
So, a new set of rules was born.
This isn’t just a small chapter in baseball history,
it’s the “birth certificate” of the modern draft system.
And I spent the whole day researching and reading old articles,
not to remember the names of a few players,
but to understand:
Sometimes, the most chaotic year can bring about the most lasting change.
