A debate on the merits of “Special Keepers” by Team Blue Moon Odum.  March 27, 2015

The BBL now stands at its “1850”.  The Special Keeper Compromise of 2002 has provided a 13 year patchwork solution to the deep division within the BBL.  The division is as such:   Union purists demand that all players be free.  That each season, each player shall  be free until auctioned at his true market value.  Confederate property hounds demand that many players be held as kept men – slaves if you will.  That each season, some players shall be enslaved.  There shall be no auction for their services.  Those unfortunate souls shall toil as the predetermined property of their BBL masters. 

The Compromise did not come without purpose.   Dump trades polluted the land.  There was the “Reverse Dump” of 2001 (BMO’s trade for keepers while leading by 20+ points) and the “Super Dump” of 2002 (When BMC unloaded every warm body on its way to last place) before the Special Keeper Compromise of 2002 was ratified.  It was, and is, a righteous goal and purpose to prevent the tainting of a BBL season with inequitable wealth transfers that shift the balance of power without just cause or excuse.

I submit to you that the BBL cannot persist in its current form.  It will not die or fade away.  But it will become all one thing or all the other.  It will allow the enslavement of all players or free every last one.  The Compromise supplants a “dump” with a “shart” – for a special keeper trade is but a mini-dump (shart).  And a shart is more pernicious than an dump, for it resides in your pants and festers as a bacterial stain in your underpants.  This is the poison that threatens the BBL.

I implore my fellow BBL owners to end the enslavement of our treasured MLB ballplayers and free them all.  Vote to end the keeper (“slave”) culture.  FREEEEEDOOOOM!!!!