Minor League Baseball Players Should Be Paid

Improved Essays
Minor League, Minor Pay
In an age where professional athletes make more than accomplished doctors and surgeons, it is surprising to find that minor league players make below minimum wage. Minor league baseball players should be paid more than what they are being paid today because it takes away from their time with family and provides with no opportunity alternative source of income. Minor league baseball players deserve to be paid more because they do not have time to have other jobs. According to Matthew Segal, minor league players have to report to daily exercise programs and spring training without getting paid. This takes up most of the players day, leaving them with no time for an extra job. Not only do the players have to report to practice and workouts, but they also have unpredictable schedules during the season. “Compounding the problem, players are frequently transferred between teams, meaning the job search starts all over in unfamiliar territory next off-season” (Segal). During the off season, minor league players do not earn any money from the league. Additionally, the players are barely able to provide for themselves with the salary given, let alone a family. According to the economic policy institute, the average salary needed to support a family is $48,778 per year. This is not even close to the salary being made by minor league baseball players. Men are often the providers of the family and they are not able to do so with such a little income salary. College baseball players have already put in so much effort to get to where they are at, but to get to the next level is a whole different thing. Out of all the college baseball players, only 10.5% manage to play at the professional level. Most of these players, however do not go straight to the top, but rather start on a minor league team. Unlike the MLB where the baseball players get more than enough money, minor league players get roughly half of what a fast food worker makes. Not to mention that only 3% of the minor league players make it all the way. In addition, when minor league players switch teams, their income starts all over again. While most minor league players earn between $3,000-$7,500 a season, major league players earn far more. According to spotrac.com, Clayton Kershaw is going to earn $34,571,428 in the next season, while minor league players after playing in
…show more content…
The families of the hopeful player see a great absence in their lives. Significant others, who would normally rely on the male for monetary income, have to become self sufficient in their earnings; surprisingly, this would prove the ongoing national trend. Four in ten American households, with children 18 or younger, now include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census. Along with this, if the player has children, the kids will also be affected significantly. Compared with peers whose parents are often absent throughout the day, teens whose parents are present when they go to bed, wake up, and come home from school are less likely to experience emotional distress (familyfacts.org). The unpredictable schedule causes a child to have an unpredictable home life without an established parental

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Nostalgia In The Natural

    • 1095 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In Sports Illustrated’s article Underworked and Overpaid, Joe Sheehan argues that players are sometimes even overpaid because the lack of production from particular players. One example that Sheehan gave was former Detroit Tiger pitcher Max Scherzer. Sheehan showed that even in 169 career starts as a pitcher, Scherzer has never completed a full game, but is still most likely sign a huge nine-figure contract in the off season. This is the perception of the modern athlete—that they don’t work hard and get paid a lot to do it. And Roy Hobbs is the clear opposite, in which he gets overworked and underpaid.…

    • 1095 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Work But No Pay? Hard work but no pay? If a hard day's work is put in, shouldn't it receive a good pay or at least some pay, especially if it is a high risk job? This is what NCAA players face they put hard risky work in and see no pay even if there names are used.…

    • 880 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From the classic ball spikes to the salsa dance to twerking, the arsenal of touchdown celebrations practiced by the NFL athletes is highly creative. Though, in this era of touchdown ceremonies, there is a growing war on whether or not they are appropriate. The players should not be prohibited from these silly moments because they deserve the reward from scoring, and in addition the players are being unequally and too severely disciplined, even though the league’s administrators believe it is are detrimental to the character and integrity of the NFL. Firstly, the prime reason a player would throw a party after scoring, is because it is an immense accomplishment for their team in a game. For example, on two separate accounts, both wide receiver…

    • 846 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A main argument in Collegiate level sports is if the student athletes should receive pay or not. Former athletes may argue that a student playing a sport at a university should be paid; some spectators do not see pay for college athletes is a necessity needed. For some athletes tuition, room and board, and book expenses are covered through a full athletic scholarship, and these scholarships are still more than what academic students can receive (Block). What more could the athletes possibly want from the university? The athletes are being noticed throughout the whole country on Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) channels, isn’t the publicity enough plus earning a free college degree?…

    • 1088 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Have you ever been watching a college sporting event on television and wondered how much the schools actually gain on having these sports? Well the answer to that question really is not that much. In 2010 the average net revenue of division one college football was 3.15 million, but 43 percent of the schools in division one had an average net revenue of 2.87 million in losses (Chua). This is because the schools that play in the bowl games end up spending more to play the football games then what they would make in the end. So after all the money is distributed over the college for paying the coaches and paying for equipment and other things in their sport programs there would be nothing left.…

    • 1297 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    These athletes have done nothing that entitles them to a salary or hourly…

    • 1155 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    College players go put in the most work for their one big shot at the pro league and to make thousands/millions of dollars in the future, but in reality that chance of making it is very slim. The NCAA states that “eight million kids participate in high school sports each year in the U.S., 460,000 make it to play in college and only a fraction will go pro” making everyone else dream still a dream. You have to be one of a kind, have the best talent in the country and have a go hard work ethic at what sport you play everyday for the rest of you career even in the offseason. With all of this hard work that you put in since the beginning of school and you get to college you should be paid to play.…

    • 1136 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The most important reason that college players shouldn't get paid is because, quite frankly, that is not what college is about. For example, when a kid goes to college, they are going to learn and educate themselves, not become an athlete. “When we talk about paying college athletes, we overlook the…

    • 582 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    I think that college athletes should get paid because they are working hard by going to practice and learning new things to make them better and other people besides the college athletes are getting paid. The first reason why I think college athletes should get paid is because when they show up for practice they play hard to get better and win games and I think that If they get paid it will help them pay for the college there going to and make them want to keep playing the sport.…

    • 309 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    College athletes should not be paid to play. The first reason why college athletes should not be paid to play is because they are playing for a college not a professional sports team. Therefore, college athletes are there to get an education and to become the best athlete they can be. Many college athletes get full scholarships to big universities and colleges. However, for them to stay student athletes they must keep their GPA up.…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Should College Athletes Be Paid For Their Performance? College Athletics bring millions of dollars to some of the biggest universities around the country. Coaches get paid immense salaries based on the performance of their players and due to the increasing attention in college athletics it will only continue to increase. Huge sums of money are generated through college sports and college athletes should be acquiring enough to live comfortably aside from their athletic advantages.…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The only real difference is you don’t see kids getting traded or any of the college athletes making money. College athletes work just as hard as the pros but they have to do their work. They also miss classes and have to make up work unlike other kids which isn’t very fair. “The argument for performance-based play boils down to simple equity. The average salary for a big-time college football coach last year was $2.05 million (the UW’s Chris Peterson earned $3.2 million), while student-athletes worked an average of 43 hours a week, requiring them to miss classes.…

    • 1118 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Players sometimes should not be paid because they do not…

    • 2002 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    As a society, we have witnessed how sports have quickly taken over as a dominant feature of the human culture. College sports as a whole has taken the sports world by storm, there we see the best young talent in the country play against one another as they represent some of the greatest institutions in the nation. As the years go by, it seems like that the best players in the NCAA decide to leave their colleges earlier each year to chase their dreams of playing professional sports. I think this is a cancer to collegiate athletics that the NCAA committee needs to cut out as soon as possible. To these athletes it seems like a great idea to declare for their professional statuses early, however; it is only hurting them in the long run.…

    • 1776 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Universities across the country make millions of dollars every year from college athletics. However, student-athletes receive nothing except for college tuition and room/board in return, even though they are the foundation of the entire industry. This one-sided trend must not continue, for college athletes often struggle to pay for transportation, clothing, a place to live and food to eat, while the universities reap the rewards from their labors. College athletes should be paid money in some form as compensation for universities using their likeness and profiting from their athletic exploits. The first reason college athletes should be paid is that while playing sports for their schools they risk injury, and they lose time for studying which can affect their learning.…

    • 493 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays