sports leagues in the 1950s. Successful clubs saw the draft as anti-competitive. Yankees executive Johnny Johnson equated it with communism. At the same time, Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist Arthur Daley compared the system to a "slave market." Prior to the implementation of the first-year player draft, amateurs were free to sign with any Major League team that offered them a contract. As a result, wealthier teams such as the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals were able to stockpile young talent, while poorer clubs were left to sign less desirable prospects. In 1947, Major League Baseball implemented the bonus rule, a restriction aimed at reducing player salaries, as well as keeping wealthier teams from monopolizing the player market. In its most restrictive form, it forbade any team which gave an amateur a signing bonus of more than $4,000 from assigning that player to a minor league affiliate for two seasons. If the player was removed from the major league roster, he became a free agent. The controversial rule was repealed twice, only to be re-instituted. The bonus rule was largely ineffective. There were accusations that teams were signing players to smaller bonuses, only to supplement them with under-the-table payments. In one famous incident, the Kansas City Athletics signed Clete Boyer, kept him on their roster for two years, then traded him to the Yankees just as he became eligible to be sent to the minor leagues. Other clubs accused the Yankees of using the Athletics as a de facto farm team, and the A's later admitted to signing Boyer on their behalf. Finally, it was the bidding war for Rick Reichardt, who signed with the Los Angeles Angels for the then outrageous bonus of $200,000, (about $1.8 million today) that led to the implementation of the draft. Major League clubs voted on the draft during the 1964 Winter Meetings. Four teams—the New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, Los Angeles Dodgers, and New York Mets—attempted to defeat the proposal, but they failed to convince a majority of teams, and in the end only the Cardinals voted against it. The draft MLB player transactions are governed by The Official Professional Baseball Rules Book, within which, Rule 4 governs the "First-Year Player Draft". Due to its place in the rules book, MLB's amateur draft is sometimes referred to as the "Rule 4 draft"; there is also a distinctly different Rule 5 draft.