Millions of people dream about becoming a professional athlete, but what it takes to get there is not always shown on television. Far from the bright lights, autographs and private jets associated with professional sports, there is a different reality to be found. A life of sleeping in hotels or on air mattresses in crowded apartments, surviving on fast food and peanut butter sandwiches and sinking entire paychecks into rent is the reality that many Minor League Baseball (MiLB) players face.
For years, minor leaguers have faced an uphill battle against their major league affiliates regarding fair wages and working conditions. Thousands of players spend months vying for limited spots — positions that progressively become more limited and harder to obtain with each level leading up to the majors. Players work for hours a day training, but are not compensated proportionately for their work. Some of the time, they are not paid at all; such as during spring training, the period before the baseball season officially starts. MiLB players face a myriad of struggles even to be able to play, but these struggles primarily fall into three main categories: pay, representation and lifestyle.
Pay
“I mean, the biggest thing, obviously the elephant in the room is the pay, right?” said Phil Caulfield ’17, who played second base for LMU from 2016-2017. “You know, you are playing a professional sport and you would assume that the title of professional baseball player would come with some financial security behind it, because you’ve reached the pinnacle of what you wanted to do for so many years.”
After graduating from LMU in 2017 with a degree in communication studies, Caulfield was drafted in the 32nd round of the 2017 Major League Baseball (MLB) draft by the Washington Nationals. After two seasons in Washington’s farm system, he elected to play independent professional baseball, and recently signed to play next season in Mexico.
“You’re not really getting taken care of like a professional athlete, even though on the field, when you’re playing the game, you feel like one. It’s a very hot and cold feeling, especially in the off-season … you know that you’re not going to make an extreme amount of money during the season,” Caulfield continued.
“[Teams] would send the players out there and then that team would make money from ticket sales and promotions, and those players unfortunately weren’t seeing any of that. They were just getting paid their salaries,” noted an anonymous former athletic trainer for the Tri-City ValleyCats. The ValleyCats are now an independent team, but at the time of this trainer’s employment, the team was the Class A Short Season affiliate of the Houston Astros. “To my understanding, those players don’t get part of the ticket sales, part of the promotions and things like that. For minor league players, I don’t think they saw any type of value from bobblehead nights and from promotions … If you’re not a [top 10 round draft pick], you know, maybe you got a $10,000 signing bonus. You have to decide [whether it’s worth it], and you’re not seeing any money for promotions and things like that.”
In a similar vein, under the Uniform Player Contract, players forfeit the rights to their name, image and likeness, allowing MLB to “exploit each of the[se] rights … without additional payment or other compensation to [the] player.” This means that any revenue from promotional material, bobbleheads, jerseys or any other products directly benefit the team, while the player whose name or face is on the product gets nothing.
That’s not the only way that professional baseball has used legal means to skirt paying their minor leaguers fairly. MiLB players are one of the very few groups exempted from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes regulations on minimum wage, overtime pay and child labor, among other protections.
Almost every other worker in America has been given these rights, so why are minor leaguers in particular left out? Simply, MLB doesn’t think they are employees. For years, MLB has maintained that minor league play was simply a pathway to the major leagues, and that players involved were not pursuing a career, but a “seasonal apprenticeship.” This was made official with 2018’s Save America’s Pastime Act, which was originally proposed in 2016 in response to a lawsuit alleging that MLB owed players for overtime completed during the season as well as offseason training.
Though MLB raised minimum minor league pay for the 2021 season, there is still more that needs to be done. Presently, players are paid between $400 and $700 per week depending on level, but are still only paid for about five months a year. That equals roughly $8,000 to $14,000 per year, figures which are at or well below the national poverty limits.
Additionally, MLB is exempt from the Sherman Act, which precludes organizations from working together to create imbalance in the competitive market. In short, MLB is not subject to antitrust regulations and has near-complete control over baseball in America. This level of power means that there is very little oversight, and as MLB controls MiLB, there is no ability for minor league players to seek employment elsewhere if they decide to leave the organization.
The full article can be found here.