Reese Kaplan -- Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Minor league ballplayers earn approximately what a burger flipper at McDonald’s gets paid.  It is common for someone toiling in Iowa or Nebraska or New Mexico might get paid as little as $5500 for the duration of the season.  If you assume the season is five months long, then you are talking about $1100 per month or about $225 per week.  At Iowa’s prevailing minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, a full time employee would earn over $1160.  Wow.

How could this happen?  I’m glad you asked.  Major League Baseball did what people who want to influence legislation always do…they spend money on professional lobbyists to try to persuade the representatives who are supposed to support their constituents’ interests to take a particular position on one side of the issue.  Now both sides are free to do so, but ballplayers earning under minimum wage have a tough road to hoe when the opposition has spent over $2.6 BILLION to ensure that the payroll situation doesn’t change. 

Just recently, a $1.3 trillion spending bill was submitted to the president and he signed it.  On page 1967 of that bill included something called “Save America’s Pastime Act” which countered the 4-year old lawsuit filed in San Francisco by three minor leaguers alleging that the owners were failing to pay minimum wage to their employees.  In fact, the ugly numbers presented above were actually overly optimistic as they cited typical work weeks of 50-60 hours which would at an average of 55 hours bring their hourly wage down to a mere $5.00 per hour. 

The legislation is very clearly a huge win for the team owners as it specifically exempts them from paying the prevailing minimum wage, “any employee employed to play baseball who is compensated pursuant to a contract that provides for a weekly salary for services performed during the league’s championship season (but not spring training or the offseason) at a rate that is not less than a weekly salary equal to the minimum wage … for a workweek of 40 hours, irrespective of the number of hours the employee devotes to baseball related activities”.  Now I don’t profess to be a lawyer but that sure seems like it gives the owners carte blanche to work the minor leaguers as long as they would like without taking into account overtime or the overall hourly wage guaranteed to people in pretty much any other field of employment.

The players’ lawyer was understandably upset with how things unfolded, “Instead of going through the regular committee process where it has a hearing, all of this was done in secret and a in a very rushed manner. It’s emblematic of how things are getting done in Washington these days, where the people with a lot of money are able to flex their political muscle and make a lot of contributions and get things done in secret that benefit only them.”

Minor league players, unlike, their major league counterparts, are not unionized.  The actual wages paid to aspiring ballplayers is pretty appalling.  The “big bucks” don’t come until someone is added to the 40-man roster at which point the more highly regarded minor leaguer earns a more reasonable $88,900.  Regardless of which level a player finds himself in the minor leagues, he’s also given a per diem of $25 per day to eat.  The General Services Administration provides travelers to my home town of El Paso more than double that amount -- $59 per day for meals, so that means Dom Smith’s predilection for fast food may have in fact been economic necessity.   Throw in the fact that more than half of that per-diem goes to "Clubhouse Dues", well, eating from the Dollar Menu is understandable.  

What’s done is done, and it’s to the detriment of a great many wannabe major leaguers that they are going to have to live well below the poverty level.  After all, businesses will pay as little as humanly possible (and legal) in order to maximize profits.  I’m no different.  If an applicant for a $50,000 job asks me for $35,000, I might kick him a $37,500 starting offer to make him feel good about accepting the job, but I’m now $12,500 ahead of what I’d budgeted.  As the minor leaguers’ lawyer pointed out, “Surely if Walmart or McDonald’s can find a way to comply with those laws, then Major League Baseball can find a way to comply with them, too.” 

Sometimes it’s good to be king.  Or at least an oligarch.