Free Agent Nation

For example, Burish came up with one of her best business ideas while taking the afternoon "off" to attend a day game of her beloved Oakland A's. "I don't know if going to a baseball game is business or fun," she says. "I've stopped worrying about it."

Because in Free Agent Nation, work is supposed to be fun.

It was the fun of her job that Theresa Fitzgerald missed when she rose from low-level designer to creative director at United Media, a New York company that syndicates columns and comic strips. She earned more and more money, got more and more responsibility, and moved further and further away from what she loved. Instead of doing art, she was managing people who did art. "I'd come into the studio and say, 'You guys are having all the fun,'" Fitzgerald explains. So, at the top of her career, she left to become a free agent.

It's yet another way that free agents have reversed the organizing premises of work in America. Remember the Peter Principle? That old chestnut held that people rise through the ranks until they reach the level of their incompetence. Fitzgerald embodies the Paul Principle: people rise though an organization until they stop having fun. Then they leave to become free agents.

Today Fitzgerald, 35, operates out of a 10x12 room in an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The ceiling is low, and the ceiling fan makes it seem even lower. A plastic Gumby dangles from the cord, dancing to the sound of the jackhammers devouring West 83rd Street. The Paul Principle propelled her here, where she designs children's clothing, toys, and promotions for clients including Playskool, Scholastic Publishing, and Major League Baseball. As much as she treasures her years as a corporate honcho, she knew she was losing touch with who she really was.

"I'm a doer," Fitzgerald say. "I would have very busy days at United Media, but I wouldn't have done anything."

She does not consider this boxy room the East Coast version of a Cupertino garage -- the incubator for a large design operation of her own. "If I become a studio," she says, "I begin to lose me."

Tacked above her drafting table is a newspaper photo of Norman Rockwell with a small knot of people. "Why do you have a picture of Norman Rockwell?" I ask. She points to a young man at the edge of the frame, almost cropped out of the photo: "That's my dad. He took drawing classes from Norman Rockwell."

"Was he a professional artist?" I ask.

"No," she answers. "He worked at General Electric for 35 years, but he was a very talented artist." Back then, freedom and security were a tradeoff, and with five kids to feed, he understandably chose security. Work wasn't personal, and it damn well wasn't supposed to be fun.

"It was," Fitzgerald says, "a different world."

"I'm wiped," says Joanna Baker from her cell-phone as she drives to a meeting somewhere near Chicago. "I've been working every night until 10."

Baker, 36, is the founder of an executive search firm. She's off to see another client. Like many in her field, Baker has sterling academic credentials -- an undergraduate degree from Barnard College, an advanced degree in management from Northwestern University's Kellogg School. But unlike the legions of squeaky-clean MBAs who make their way lemminglike from on-campus interviews to socially acceptable "jobs," Baker has been a free agent from day one of her career. Smart, talented, driven, she is a first-round draft pick who's opted to play in a league of her own.

She recalls her B-school days as she pilots her Toyota Corolla wagon to her next stop: "Everybody was looking for that big plum job. Everybody wanted to be a brand manager." She too was tending that way -- until she attended a few recruiting receptions. "They were fake, they were plastic." She was looking for authenticity.

She had entered Kellogg's Class of '93 after working in social services in New York City: "I worked at a nonprofit. I didn't know what the hell a balance sheet was." But gradually Baker grew to love the world of business, in particular the talent side of business -- hiring and recruiting people to join companies.

By her second year of B-school, she figured she could do that sort of work on her own, but she covered her bets by talking to the megacompanies that were interviewing on campus. A pharmaceuticals company offered her a job as a recruiter at a juicy starting salary. But she decided she'd rather go it alone. Then, in the spring of her second year, the dean of Kellogg took Baker to lunch and told her not to do anything rash. Take the job at the drug company, he advised. You won't regret it.

For a time, she considered it. Here was the dean of one of the nation's top business schools giving her private career counseling.