Exploited minor leaguers are baseball’s underclass

Bill Knight column for 5-6, 7 or 8, 2019

Twelve months ago, I wrote, “Minor league ballplayers work for peanuts (without Crackerjacks, presumably),” and with the new season come new voices on the same issue.

In 244 clubs in 19 minor leagues, some 7,000 ballplayers work to become big leaguers, but these athletes barely get by.

“If baseball’s business model isn’t an indictment of trickle-down economics, I don’t know what is,” said Dale Murphy – whose 19-year career included MVP years in 1982 and ’83, five Gold Gloves and seven All-Star appearances.

Indeed, for the hours they work, minor leaguers are paid less than the minimum wage – violating the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) – until last spring, when President Trump signed the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill Congress passed with an exemption ensuring that thousands of these ballplayers will be underpaid. The rider is titled the “Save America’s Pastime Act,” but ought to be called the “Enrich Wealthy MLB Owners Act.”

They set the pay for minor leaguers – paying single-A level minor leaguers $1,100/month for 50 to 70 hour work weeks and triple-A players about $2,150/month, for almost six months of work, mostly six or seven days a week, not including Spring Training, pre- and post-game workouts, travel, etc. – $36 to $71 a day. Together, owners spent about $2.6 million in lobbying.

“While the lights shine on the biggest stars of any sport, what is overlooked are players toiling in the development leagues,” wrote Filiberto Nolasco Gomez in Workday Minnesota.

Sleeping on air mattresses, eating peanut butter or missing meals, buying used gear and even resorting to online crowdfunding to help with rent, etc., they are baseball’s working class – arguably, its underclass.

Remembering his time in the minors, Murphy said, “Baseball hasn’t just failed to keep up with inflation; it has regressed. Minor league players make unpaid interns look like royalty. But unpaid interns are looking for entry-level positions in their respective fields. Minor league players are among the best in the world at what they do. [But] if you have a kid, I don’t know how you’re paying for diapers. If you have a car, I don’t know how you’re paying for gas.

“How, in any way, is subjecting players to such low compensation investing in your product?” he asked. “This is a question of treating professional athletes like people and not forcing them to live in poverty.”

Joe Sheehan of The Athletic has said most minor leaguers aren’t like probationary workers trying to prove themselves as much as guys helping the few real prospects get ahead.

“Most of them aren’t apprentices,” Sheehan said.

MLB owners can afford to pay better (for the 16^th consecutive year, they made record revenues in 2018: $10.3 billion). But that’s unlikely.

“This is a group of people that thinks nothing of lying relentlessly so as to gain access to the public purse,” Sheehan said. “To expect them to spend money they’re under no legal or competitive obligation to spend is a fool’s errand.”

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. Others are trying.

“More than Baseball” [ https://www.morethanbaseball.org/ ] tries to help by raising money online to fund players’ food, rent and other necessities, reported Jake Seiner of the Associated Press. Another venture, “Big League Advance,” organizes investors to loan minor leaguers money for a percentage of future (Major League) earnings. And the private “Pando Pooling” company arranges for players to pool their projected future earnings to help compensate for the meager money they make now. (Pando, which reports having hundreds of players participating, also is considering partnering current MLB players and minor leaguers so successful pros could help underwrite current minor leaguers for a cut of future contracts.

Bill McCarthy, president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, said the minor-league exclusion from federal law sets a “troubling precedent” because it could prompt other employers to request minimum wage and overtime exemptions.

“Whether you are tending bar or playing minor league baseball, working people deserve to earn at least the minimum wage in the communities where they work,” McCarthy said.