Minor leaguers exploited in major way: pay

Bill Knight column for Thurs., Fri. or Sat. May 10, 11 or 12, 2018

Minor league ballplayers work for peanuts (without Crackerjacks, presumably). So if you enjoy one of 16 teams in the Class-A Midwest League – from Quad Cities, Peoria and Beloit to Burlington, Kane County and South Bend – realize these professional athletes barely get by.

In 244 clubs in 19 minor leagues, more than 7,000 ballplayers dream of the big leagues, and most probably love it so much they think they’d PAY to play, like other exceptional competitors in athletics or the arts. Some may feel a calling to the game, a vocational devotion that requires sacrifices, like the clergy or teaching. But some minor-leaguers understand that playing is working, too. They have bills, some have families, and for the number of hours they work, they’re paid less than the minimum wage – violating the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

At least, it WAS a violation, arguably, until this spring, when Congress passed and President Trump signed the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill. There, starting on page 1,967, is an addition that ensures thousands of these ballplayers will be underpaid. The provision amends the FLSA by making baseball players “seasonal workers” not subject to overtime laws, to be paid minimum wage based on 40-hour work weeks “irrespective of the number of hours the employee devotes to baseball related activities.”

Maury Brown, who covers the business of sports for Forbes magazine, writes, “Minor League Baseball players are about to become second-class citizens. This rider has the flagrantly inappropriate title of ‘Save America’s Pastime Act’.”

The National Pastime changed over decades, and though today’s minor leagues try to tap nostalgia, 21st century minor-league baseball is different than its heydays, when there were many more players, leagues, fans and STAKES. After World War II, with the spread of television, baseball’s minor leagues became more of a developmental subsidiary of Major League Baseball than local efforts to win pennants. So teams like the River Bandits, Bees or Chiefs are marketed as cheap family entertainment with a chance to see some future major leaguers. The minors are successful, attracting some 41 million fans last summer. However, they aren’t thousands of guys showcasing their talents to get called up to the Bigs, but actually a couple hundred men vying to play for major-league opportunities, with thousands of teammates providing pitches and batted balls, competition and a familiar environment.

“Minor-league baseball players have little to no economic value on their own,” writes Joe Sheehan of The Athletic. “It sounds demeaning [but] minor-league players have no individual leverage, because the games in which they play aren’t meaningful.”

Sheehan said most minor leaguers aren’t like probationary workers trying to prove themselves as much as human figures that contribute to others’ pro-baseball experience. Or ILLUSION.

“Most of them aren’t apprentices, but rather extras that provide a context for the actual apprentices,” Sheehan said. “Most minor-league baseball players have jobs because the actual prospects need a context in which to do their jobs, the way professional actors need unpaid extras walking on the street behind them to give a scene verisimilitude.”

Maybe that could lead to compromise. TV and movie “background players” – extras that lend credence to scenes – can earn pay and eventually maybe advance. The union representing actors – the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists – has contracts requiring companies to employ a minimum number of paid extras, and after extras work x-number of projects, they can join SAG-AFTRA.

After all, the successful and relatively powerful Major League Baseball Players Association may support minor-league players’ attempts to improve their compensation, but it cannot directly help. They’re obligated to represent major league ballplayers. And organizing a minor-league union is difficult, said St. Louis attorney and former Giants minor leaguer Garrett Broshuis, who filed a class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball over the issue.

“Guys are afraid to unionize,” Broshuis said. “Long-term, I think it would be a great solution. The short-term part is these guys are chasing a dream and they are afraid to stick their necks out.”

For now, MLB owners – who set the pay for minor leaguers – pay a maximum of $11,000 to a minor leaguer for almost six months of work, mostly six or seven days a week, not including Spring Training, pre- and post-game workouts, travel, etc. – about $65 a day.

MLB owners can afford to pay better, but no one should expect that, Sheehan said.

“This is a group of people that thinks nothing of lying relentlessly so as to gain access to the public purse,” he said. “To expect them to spend money they’re under no legal or competitive obligation to spend is a fool’s errand. They’ve literally spent millions to help exempt themselves from labor laws rather than spend those millions on solving the problem.”