Branch Rickey, then with the St. Louis Cardinals, founded baseball’s first farm system in 1918, buying stock in minor league teams on which he cultivated new players for the Cardinals. These clubs became widely known as farm teams and the major league players sent down to them from the parent club for more seasoning (or forever) were said to be farmed out. The expression had been used for the sale of a major leaguer to the miners fifteen years or so before this. The term is now also used to mean assigning work to another person by financial agreements, or to assign the care of a child to someone else.