The Athletic spoke to 30 people for this story, including players, their families and minor-league staff. Due to the sensitivity of the topic and the employment risk involved for players who speak publicly about it, anonymity was granted to those who asked for it.



When Congress was presented with the 2,232-page, $1.3 billion spending package to vote on last March, one of the defining pages, located deep on page 1,967, could have easily gone unnoticed.



The “Save America’s Pastime Act” was the result of lobbying by Major League baseball — lobbying that cost the league roughly $2.6 million over two years — to legalize an exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. This exemption would allow the league to deny players overtime pay “for a workweek of 40 hours irrespective of the number of hours the employee devotes to baseball-related activities.’’



The proceedings caught the players’ attention. They...