WASHINGTON, D.C. – The lower echelons of the minor leagues might as well be an alternate universe where the preposterous passes for normal and the ridiculous for ordinary. The stories sound farcical, exaggerated, beyond anything Bull Durham or other depictions of the minors could dream up in a fictitious realm.

“I’ve seen somebody cook chicken with an iron,” Colorado Rockies prospect Brendan Rodgers said. “Put a piece of chicken on the ironing board, press it down and eat it. In their hotel room. I was laughing. I was in awe. I didn’t really know what to think or say. I didn’t think of videoing it. Going back, I definitely would’ve videotaped it.”

Whereas the stories of the past were passed down from generation to generation like amulets, today’s find themselves transported from cell phone to social media in a moment. And nothing captures the absurdism like Minor League Grinders, an Instagram account known to nearly every player at Sunday’s All-Star Futures Game – and followed by plenty who love the raw, realistic depiction of life before the major leagues.

A photo of six twin beds jammed into one room because teams pay players far less than minimum wage? Check. A paycheck for $85.55 that covers two weeks of work? That, too. A raccoon peering out from a hole in a bathroom wall? Of course. Three guys sharing one tub? Uncomfortably. Letters from the Midwest League fining players $30 for a national-anthem standoff? Oh, yeah.





“It’s been my goal from the start to open up a window to all the minor league players,” said Blake McFarland, who started the account with a teammate last April as a Toronto Blue Jays minor leaguer and continued it following his retirement after the season to focus on his art career. “To show everyone something they see every day that’s funny, that’s interesting, that they can relate to, that they would enjoy. We wanted to start it with players who were grinders. We wanted to have funny stuff that happens only in the minor leagues. Guys sleeping on blow-up rafts. Guys walking through drive-thrus late at night.”

While McFarland’s intentions were to celebrate the shared experience of minor leaguers, he knows the subtext of the posts is obvious: the mistreatment of minor league players – laid bare in a lawsuit seeking fair wages, codified when Congress snuck language into its spending bill limiting the number of hours for which players can be paid – is a feature, not a bug.

Minor leaguers practically brainwash themselves into seeing the conditions as the price they must pay to play, a notion that finds support among those quick to remind that they’re playing a kids’ game. Kids’ game or not, the idea long proffered by Minor League Baseball that the journey is an apprenticeship is insulting to players whose organizations expect year-round dedication – and pay minor leaguers only five months of the year.

“That’s the big debate,” McFarland said. “We’re playing something we love to play. We’d rather be nowhere else. At the same time, changes do have to be made. All my friends who have real jobs, if you were to tell them how you live, it doesn’t relate to any other job. You’re not treated as an employee. With that being said, everyone loves playing. We play for the dream.”

Sometimes things get a little rough in the minor leagues. (Instagram/MinorLeagueGrinders) More

Short of a major league debut, the Futures Game is as fertile as the dream gets for those slogging through the minor leagues. Nate Lowe started at first base for the U.S. team in its home run bonanza of a 10-6 victory over the World, and as he surveyed the clubhouse, he saw million-dollar bonus baby after million-dollar bonus baby. Those are the lucky ones, the exception to those like Lowe, who signed with the Tampa Bay Rays as a 13th-round pick out of Mississippi State for $100,000. Taxes took close to half that, and the $1,300-a-month salary in A ball last year ate into even more.

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