December 28th, 2018 at 8:00 am 
by Ron Cervenka Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson almost had it right:
“Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys,
Don’t let ’em pick guitars or drive them old trucks,
Let ’em be doctors and lawyers and such.
Almost.
What Waylon and Willie should have said was was:
“Let ’em be major league baseball players.”
Beginning in 2019, the minimum salary for a major league baseball player increases to $555,000 – up $10,000 from the 2018 MLB minimum of $545,000 – to play a kid’s game.
Obvious, I’m being facetious here. The truth of the matter is that of the hundreds of thousand of T-Ballers and Little Leaguers, tens of thousands of high school and college baseball players, and thousands of minor league baseball players, there are exactly 750 major leaguer baseball players in the world.
That’s it. Only 750 guys playing a game that each and every one of us only wishes we were good enough to play at that level … and be paid more than a half a million dollars minimum to do so for only nine months out of the year – including spring training and excluding individual off-season work.
To put this into perspective, the median household income (not individual income) in the United States in June of 2018 was $62,175 – back when the MLB minimum was only $545,000. But here again, of your chosen profession, are there 750 or fewer on the planet?
Please understand that in no way am I bagging on the chosen 750. In fact, and as noted, this is the MLB minimum salary, of which only pre-arbitration-eligible players are making. Players who have already reached their arbitration-eligible years generally make considerably more, and those who have reached free agency millions more; in some cases tens of millions more and in a few cases hundreds of millions more, as we are all about to witness with outfielder Bryce Harper and shortstop Manny Machado in the coming days this off-season, and with Angels outfielder Mike Trout next off-season.
The thing that baseball fans need to remember is that, for the most part, it’s not our money. Oh sure, you can absolutely positively be assured that ticket prices, parking costs, and food and beverage costs will be higher in 2019, but the bulk of the players’ salaries come from television broadcasting rights, such as the 25-year / $8.35 billion (with a B) deal that the Dodgers signed in 2013 with Time Warner Cable, now known as Spectrum SportsNet LA, which began service in 2014.
The bad news is that almost five years later, many households in the greater Los Angeles area still do not have access to Spectrum SportsNet LA due to on-going disputes with several other major cable and satellite providers, including DIRECTV (which is owned by AT&T) and Cox Communications. And per an agreement with MLB.com, local market games will again be blacked on MLB.TV in 2019.
Putting it all into perspective, we, as Dodger fans, will continue to do whatever we have to do – including paying more for a Dodger Dog (etc.) – in order to watch Kershaw, Justin Turner, Corey Seager, Cody Bellinger, Max Muncy, and possibly even Bryce Harper play for our beloved Dodgers.
Even if it is only a kids’ game … salaries notwithstanding.
Play Ball!
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How could they ever live on that??
But, but, the minor leaguers…
Most guys drafted in the first 10 rounds get a pretty good signing bonus – some for several millions. Unfortunately, those drafted in the later rounds make LESS than minimum wage.
But IF they make it to The Show…
Just remember that for many of us, including you and me, in our prime years nobody was even using the word “million” when discussing baseball salaries.
Consider that when Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale held out together in ’66 Sandy settled for $125,000 (22.5% of today’s minimum) and Don for $110,000 (19.8%). In ’72 Maury rejected $95,000 because he wanted to make it to six figures (he settled for $100,000).
I indeed remember. Back then an adult ticket in the Left Field Pavilion cost $1.50 and a kid’s ticket was 75¢.
I was stationed at March AFB for the ’70 & ’71 seasons, sat in those buck and a half seats every Saturday the Dodgers were home. Left field all but one, that one in right field was the closest I got to catching a home run (from Willie McCovey).
The bleachers were a $1.50 for many years. I went to a ton of games during 1973 through 1975 as a poor college student living on the GI Bill and working part time.
Walter O’Malley believed in letting the fans in cheap and hammering them on food and souvenirs. However, he must not have been charging too much for food and beer because I remember consuming lots of that also.
Bottom Line, the Federal Reserve sucks at it’s mandate of stabilizing prices.
Buy some Gold.
When he was really young (ages 2 to 5) I tried convincing my nephew that he should be a centerfielder. I told him about all the money he could make playing baseball. (Never football, because he is a smart kid and I didn’t want his brain turning to jelly.)
Didn’t work. In fact, he doesn’t really like any sports.
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The MLBPA should really be looking out for minor leaguers… after all, they were minor leaguers themselves once. It’s like the bad old days when even MAJOR leaguers needed to find a second job.
The MLBPA does not have a legal right to lookout for minor leaguers, it only has the right to collectively bargain for ML players. Almost impossible for the minor league players to organize into a union since the collective bargaining unit changes so frequently from year-to-year and each team would be the employer of its players.
MLB pay structure is out of whack and in need of a new approach that rewards players sooner for above average performance than the current arbitration process. It is very frustrating to watch players like Taylor, Muncy, Seager, Bellinger, Buehler, et al be paid well below the level of their performance compared to their peers while watching players like Carl Crawford, Homer Bailey, etc. be paid multiple times more when they are not even on the field.
“Frustrating”? Are you serious? They each make more in one year than I made in my entire Air Force career.
Yes, I am serious. Comparing professional athletes’ compensation to your’s and/or mine is apples and oranges. The pay structure in baseball that pays a player like Buehler $555K while Homer Bailey gets $28MM is ridiculous. Bluejays are paying Troy Tulowitzki $38MM over next 2 years NOT to play for them while Max Muncy gets $555K. Dodgers paid Brian Wilson $10MM NOT to pitch for them while Caleb Ferguson gets $555K. I could go on and on and on… with inequities in the current MLB pay process.
What I have a hard time wrapping my pea brain around is guys like Yasmani Grandal turning down a guaranteed four-year / $60 million deal from the Mets because, for some reason, that is not enough financial security for him.
I couldn’t spend that kind of money in FIVE lifetimes.
Well, it is Grandal and we both know that his baseball IQ is not that great, so perhaps the IQ issue extends into his day-to-day life. Seriously, if the report is correct and for guaranteed money over 4 years then something is amiss. Perhaps significant money deferred for several years; 4th year is a team option; and/or an incentive heavy contract with only half the money guaranteed? If he turned down 4 years, guaranteed $60MM over that period without a comparable or better offer on the table then Grandal is not smart enough to be the Dodgers catcher.
I also, along with many others you and I may know could not spend that much in 10 lifetimes perhaps…