Our new issue, “After Bernie,” is out now. Our questions are simple: what did Bernie accomplish, why did he fail, what is his legacy, and how should we continue the struggle for democratic socialism? Get a discounted print subscription today !

The Major League Baseball season is winding down, and the athletes not fortunate enough to have a spot on playoff squads will soon be golfing, planning vacations, or preparing for the 2018 season. For minor leaguers, however, who play a shorter season and who earn a fraction of major league salaries, late September usually means returning to a second (or third) job. “We don’t make a ton of money,” Anthony Gallas, an outfielder in Cleveland’s system, told a local news outlet in 2016, “Most people would think, ‘Oh, you’re a professional baseball player. You just take it easy in the offseason.’ Well, the fact is, most of the guys, we work.” Gallas said he had found employment at a movie theater and taught hitting before heading to Venezuela for winter ball. Another Cleveland farmhand at the time, pitcher JP Feyereisen, described his offseason: mornings ripping out carpet for his father’s flooring company, evenings behind the front desk of a fitness company. He said he gave pitching lessons when he had extra time. Gallas and Feyereisen’s offseasons are typical of players far from the big-league lights. Most minor leaguers make between $3,000 and $7,500 over their five-month season. The highest paid players pull in around $2,150 a month, while those at the lowest levels earn just $1,100. Regardless of pay rates, they work between sixty and seventy hours a week. The minor league’s poor labor standards grew directly out of the MLB’s poor labor practices. Despite its hefty salaries today, Major League Baseball was for many years a quasi-feudal system, with teams enjoying unmitigated control over players and the league elbowing out any threats to its turf. Only after decades of lawsuits and player unionization were major league ballplayers able to win basic labor protections and recoup some of the profits they generated for owners. Minor leaguers are still waiting for their payday.

Feudalism and Monopoly In 1903, the American and National Leagues unified to create a new professional baseball organization. As part of the merger, the American League adopted the National League’s “reserve clause,” which effectively forced players to stay with the first team that signed them. The rule nullified player autonomy and significantly depressed wages. Players across the nascent MLB could be traded, but they couldn’t sign for a higher offer from a different team when their contracts expired. In 1912, promoter John T. Powers created a rival organization called the Federal League, which compensated players better and didn’t impose a reserve clause. The new league sent shockwaves through the MLB. Some big names defected, and MLB officials sweetened the deal for stars like Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, fearing they might follow suit. But despite offering more lucrative contracts, the Federal League struggled to survive. While it managed to briefly sign pitching superstar Walter Johnson, he ultimately reneged on the deal. The failed coup dealt a devastating blow to an organization that had been branded an “outlaw league.” Still smarting from the abortive deal, the Federal League sued the MLB in 1915, arguing that it was a monopoly in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis — who would go on to become the MLB’s first commissioner — purposely delayed the case for the rest of the year, and the Federal League essentially fell apart. But another challenge to the MLB quickly sprung up. After being denied a decent buyout offer — and prevented from purchasing an existing team and moving it to their city — the owners of the Federal League’s Baltimore Terrapins filed another lawsuit, once again claiming that the MLB was contravening the Sherman Act. Again the upstart league lost, this time before the Supreme Court. Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing in a unanimous decision, argued that baseball games should “not be called trade of commerce in the commonly accepted use of those words.” The decision legally exempted Major League Baseball from all antitrust laws. The reserve clause remained intact. The next shot fired at the MLB came not from incensed owners but from exploited players. In 1950, George Earl Toolson, a minor-league pitcher for the New York Yankees, sued his bosses, asserting that the reserve clause was limiting his career prospects. The Yankees were so good, he argued, that he had little chance of being called up to the majors. And the reserve clause prevented him from inking a deal with a less competitive team. After being demoted to the Yankees’ club in Binghamton, New York, Toolson refused to report, contending that baseball should follow the same laws as other businesses. Three years later, the Supreme Court upheld the antitrust exemption, ruling 7-2 in favor of the MLB. The major-league owners faced one more legal test before the baseball players union killed the reserve clause for good. When the St Louis Cardinals traded their star centerfielder, Curt Flood, to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1969, Flood declined to go. He didn’t want to leave St Louis, play for a bad team, or work in a city run by the notoriously racist Frank Rizzo. He penned a letter to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn asking for free agency. “After twelve years in the major leagues,” Flood wrote, “I do not feel I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several States.” Kuhn denied Flood’s request, so he took his case to Marvin Miller, founder and head of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). The MLBPA had been recognized as a union just three years earlier, when Miller — a former economist for the United Steelworkers of America — was hired to lead the fledgling organization. When he showed up, players were fixated on pension plans. But Miller saw much deeper issues. The league’s minimum annual salary had increased by a mere $1,000 over the previous twenty years. The reserve clause was holding players back. As soon as Flood reached out, Miller knew the case was the perfect opportunity to target the rotten provision. But he was also sober about Flood’s chances. “I told him that given the court’s history of bias towards the owners and their monopoly, he didn’t have a chance in hell of winning,” Miller later recounted. “More important than that, I told him even if he won, he’d never get anything out of it — he’d never get a job in baseball again.” Flood was unfazed. He asked if the fight would benefit other players. Miller confirmed that it would, and the ballplayer agreed to continue. “You’re a union leader’s dream,” Miller told him. Unfortunately, Miller’s prediction about Flood’s future was completely accurate: the Supreme Court upheld the antitrust exemption, and Flood never played in the major leagues again. The next year, however, the players struck over the reserve clause, and during its first collective bargaining negotiations, the union won a 40 percent increase in the minimum annual salary and independent arbitration for player-owner disputes (rather having to appeal to the owner-friendly commissioner). Under Miller’s stewardship, the MLBPA grew into one of the country’s most powerful labor unions. By 1976, the reserve clause was dead.