University of Minnesota Law School Scholarship Repository Minnesota Journal of International Law 2004 Stealing Signs: Is Professional Baseball's United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement Enough to Avoid Another Baseball War Casey Duncan Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mjil Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Duncan, Casey, "Stealing Signs: Is Professional Baseball's United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement Enough to Avoid Another Baseball War" (2004). Minnesota Journal of International Law. 211. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mjil/211 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Minnesota Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Minnesota Journal of International Law collection by an authorized administrator of the Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Stealing Signs: Is Professional Baseball's United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement Enough to Avoid Another "Baseball War"? Casey Duncan* INTRODUCTION In 1998 U.S. Major League Baseball (MLB) entered into an agreement with Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league governing the transaction of non-free agent players be- tween the two leagues. This United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement, also known as "The Posting System Agreement" (Posting System) is designed to regulate such inter- national player transactions and to protect the interests of both leagues. While the Posting System has had some initial success, recent developments make its long-term success as a solution suspect. It is the purpose of this note to examine critically the Posting System in light of these developments, and to suggest possible changes to better effectuate its goals and protect the in- terests of both leagues and their players.